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Originally posted by Don Borchelt

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Originally posted by Mark Douglas

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Originally posted by Don Borchelt

This may be the very first forum topic that needs to be locked by the moderators for medical reasons.

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When I see a post like this I am reminded why we should all be thankful that individuals like you do NOT make those decision on this forum  (and even more thankful that folks with that kind of arrogance don't make those decisions in society at large!).

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You can have the last word, Mark.  I'll move on.

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Frankly speaking.... I was taken aback by your insinuation that there is evidence of mental illness ( "medical reasons ") by some folks posting here.

I found your attempt at humor to be juvenile and in very poor taste! I honestly thought you were better than that.

As a U.S. military veteran.... I have observed the very debilitating and challenging ordeal of mental illness. I have worked with veterans who faced this struggle on a daily basis. I can assure you it is no laughing matter! 
 

Perhaps you thought it was cute or humorous to drop your little covert hint that there are individuals posting here that need help for "medical reasons".

Don, it's not about having the last word.... it's about having a little bit of common decency and civility. Some folks may have found your comment entertaining. While others saw it for what it is..... a very cheap attempt to ridicule the perception (and your interpretation) of what constitutes mental illness.

It is very unfortunate that you felt a need to go there!

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Originally posted by janolov

Sometimes I wonder if the contemporary "Old-Time" music really is traditional?

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Contempory, and I take in from around 1964 when I got involved and  having taken time to talk to founders like Stu jamison, Mike Seeger,  Pailey,  or othes likeetc,  initially there was an idea that the true old time music player selected only "traditional" music.  I used to hold such views until I got involved in studying the practical history of music.

  The idea was that what was recorded as old time music really was traditional music.  However, all sorts of musicians old time musics of the original vintage like say Charlie Poole were not at all traditinalists, but people who were trying to infuse what music they had grown up hearing with with whit what was comiing out of ragtime and jazz or blues.    The NLCR to me were the gold standard, but anyone who knows how to research music can find so many of the songs were not traditional songs, but ragtime, minstrel, sentimental, and even broadway level popular music products.

There used to be a hard core of people who tried to judge this way.  I know because I used to go to jams and refuse to play songs that I knew were not traditional.  LOL that was when I knew squat about music.  Had I known something or the minimal research you can do about a songs orgin just with Google and the computer, not even getting out of this chair and opening a few books, would have obliterated a huge part of the music.

Old Time music was a label that was invented by record companies interested in one thing, making money by selling records.  Ralph Peer is alleged to have popularized the term, at least in the recording industry when he was at still at Okeh records.  Without naming names, I know of at least one major scholar of fiddling and dance who is at work on a history of the use of the term.  Old Time music in regard to grouping together sets of music is more or less an invention of the record companies and then folk music revivalists who started playing this music in the postwar period.   In 1950 or 1940, or even when the records were being made in the 20s and 30s,  the notion that the various sets of different music that either the record companies issued as old time music or that current old time music revivalists consider old time music was on set of  music has changed.  

Having endured and participated in many of these changes since I was a child in my parents house, at the age of 78,  defining something as old time music has changed and changed and changed.   This really became a difficult question about 20 years ago when I started to present and write banjo history and other music history and I found many of the notions popular among old time music revivalists were not useful to say the least.

ive read the entire thread, and as simplistic as it is, it seems to me that the resonator banjo, along with the dreadnought guitar were designed for maximizing volume, especially in an ensemble.

They are/were advancements , like 1 string to 5, frets, going from a gord to a hoop with a membrane head, to a resonator, geared versus friction pegsetc., all technical advancements. Arent technical innovations often more widely embraced, in a general sense?

Given the more common instrumentation of each genre, OT and Bg, is this not of relevance, in a “traditional”(ymmv,lol) sense.

And, just as solo singer song writers might use a larger body guitar, might this not also apply to those ‘pioneer contemporary “ stroke players, ie many musicians prefer a powerful instrument. Then again, there is always the cost factor, as mentioned pertaining to gus cannon and others

Fascinating thread.

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Originally posted by Lew H

EEB Not helpful at all. That's not really a response to what I said. Goodbye.

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If I understand what EEB is saying (and I may not), I would say more or less the same thing. The privileging I speak of, and the processes you speak of, are one and the same thing. It's about people favoring certain elements over others. The reasons are arguably never "purely" musical, because musical taste is tied to all kinds of extramusical factors (including, for example, the relative value we place on tradition, authenticity, markers of regional/ethnic identity, and so on). 

It's not incidental (or coincidental) that openback banjos are both widely perceived as more traditional in physical/design terms and practically better suited to the open jam / festival setting that has been a major shaper of contemporary old-time music. All this stuff is interconnected, and so just looking at the historical facts of who played what banjo when and where doesn't actually explain anything, it's just descriptive. 

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Originally posted by writerrad

My own memory and also research in the matter is that the idea that down picking was played only on banjos without external resonators was not known in the 1930s, 1940s, or 1950s among what could be called the first generation of folk revivalists.  This idea seems to have come to its head and expression only in the 1970s and 1980s.   There were too many down picking banjoists who played RBs from Clarence Ashley to Doc Watson to almost every Black banjo player found since then.  

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That hits the nail square on the head. 

One reason why a lot of the old timers were playing open back banjos is because they couldn't afford anything better. Most of them either made a banjo themselves, or ordered the cheapest banjo listed in the Sears and Roebuck, or Montgomery ward catalogs.

The idea that one "needs" an open back banjo for down picking is, in my opinion, exactly what you said. From the folk revival era through today, people see a picture of an old timer holding a simple open back banjo, and hear old scratchy recordings of old timers and think they needed an open back, and silly as it sounds, then think they needed to dull down its tone for "Clawhammer", which is a modern word I dislike because it lumps all forms of down picking into one bucket.

Speaking of an old timer who played a resonator banjo, some folks see a picture of Lee Hammons holding a Harmony banjo, then think if they get one of those they would sound like Lee Hammons. 

It is all kind of silly. The old timers played whatever banjo they could get, and just about any banjo will play banjo music no matter what style the player uses.

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Originally posted by janolov

Sometimes I wonder if the contemporary "Old-Time" music really is traditional?

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The Term Old Time music was invented by Ralph Peer when he worked for the Okeh Record Company in the early 1920s.  It really did not become generalized among the populous whatsoever.  In the 1950s when people who had been folk music revivalists in New York City like my heroes Tom Paley, John Cohen, and Mike Seeger, good men now gone but whose spirts still inspire me, began playing they began to call the music they were playing Old Time Music based on what was on the Okeh records.  

No one would have known what you were talking about if you said you like Old Time Music as opposed to Bluegrass in 1948.  No one except people at the Okeh Record company would have known what exactly you were talking about if you used that term in 1930 or 1928/   

It is not a term that comes from the people who made it, but a label put on a variety of different music that even people who played the different components did not think were all part of the same thing,  It is something people outside of the stream of people who created the music stuck a label on after thje living communities that played it had gone on to other music.  

Hard core old time music people do not necessarily agree what it is.  I do know Patrick Huber is at work at what from my brief discussions with him about it will be a wise book on the evolution of the term.

: In 42 r 43 in London Sweeney Briefly claimed he had invented the banjo and and he had the only real banjo.   A British performer at the same venue who had spent time in New York and other places in the USA  and learned the banjo appeared at the theater two days later with a banjo and got encores!

Open back or, resonators? Hummm? For me it’s this- I don’t care. I love em all. But, Mark addressed it pretty well. If I played a resonated banjo in an old-time jam ensemble, I may have to tone it down to be a part of the group where an open back banjo would more commonly be quieter. ( but not necessarily ) Sometimes my playing changes a bit when I play an open back. Odd, but for me, I can feel more a part of the banjos “history”? And often, when I play an 1850s or 1860s fretless large headed banjo, I get a different feeling, I get inspired in a different way and it comes forth in my approach to a tune. …When I was knee-deep in practicing Uncle Dave Macon banjo tricks, using a heavy resonated banjo like Gibson Mastertone would have be pretty hilarious! No, I didn’t try that…?? so it was light open back for me then. Reed and I were friends since 1967 or 68 and I miss him a lot and when I would visit him he had removed his Resonator and flanges. But, most of the time he had it on. One of my Vega #9 DeLuxe five strings has an extremely old skin head on it, and is not that loud. But boy does she sound good, vibrates against my chest as the notes happily swirl around the inside of that pie resonator to exit towards an audience’s yelling.. “ Play Foggy Mountain Breakdown “ 0r, who the hell is Wade Ward”…I love em all…??

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The Mastertones got too heavy for Uncle Dave by around `1940  his advancing arthritis and old age (lol how do you talk about old age for someone who is younger that you (i) am)  he had Gibson make him special open Backed RB 1s with dowel sticks.  However,  i have seen pictures  of him with resonator banjos since they were first available.  Uncle Dave created a public image of himself as a hay seen horse hauler, but he engaged in professional vaudeville and medicine show touring since he was about 15 or 16 years old.  I once asked my dear friend and mentor Robert Winans wht a 19th century minstrel  entertainer would have sounded like, and he said Uncle Dave.

Here I am 16 years ago when we had the Banjo Gathering in Nashville hosted by George Gruhn, playing one of them that was then in Gruhns private collection that was on the top floor of his old store.  It was a shock collection of banjos up on the top floor of his previous store.

  Earl Scruggs also had acquired one.  I dont know where the others are and I think Gruhn eventually sold this one.   Why do I know that?  Arent there more important things, like whether the banjo a foot away from me is in G or C tuning Cheers

I do remember one of these three dowl stick Uncle Dave Gibsons is in the CMA museum in Nashville. I know that after Earl Died his people were setting up a banjo museum near Shelby and I believe his got put in it, but perhaps it had not. Out of the wisdom of this kind of discussion I bought a Recording King Dirty 30s bottom of the line RB and subsequently a Washburn B-14. I also know the Tubaphone conversion I have probably came with a resonator when it was made by Vega in 1923.

It may be my new found ownership of these inexpensive but loud RBs may have to do with my declining hearing and my reluctance to wear my Costco hearing aids!

Cheers.

Tony.. I was there too and played that particular banjo during that visit at Georges place. I went back last year and played it again before it left his shop for good…Before Uncle Dave got the endorsement deal from Gibson, he played an open back Slingerland. He threw that one around I’m sure

When I go to Old Time jams it seems like the collective goal is a uniform volume and timbre, in which the group has kind of a singular, pleasing voice. It seems easier to fit into this environment with a mellow sounding open-back.

To contrast that, when I play a bluegrass break I want everyone to hear my notes distinctly from the group (and ideally all the way at the other side of the festival).

There is obviously an element of conforming to tradition going on, but I think practicality explains the instrument choice pretty well too.

LouieChee Right on. And goals and expectations change over time, too, even if subtly!

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Originally posted by LouieChee

When I go to Old Time jams it seems like the collective goal is a uniform volume and timbre, in which the group has kind of a singular, pleasing voice. It seems easier to fit into this environment with a mellow sounding open-back.

To contrast that, when I play a bluegrass break I want everyone to hear my notes distinctly from the group (and ideally all the way at the other side of the festival).

There is obviously an element of conforming to tradition going on, but I think practicality explains the instrument choice pretty well too.

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Solution; carry both, show up, read the room.