"The World's Loudest Banjo Player"...Ray Montana of Bacon & Day Montana banjo and Vaudeville fame.
His son created the Archie comic books and newspaper funny page inclusions.
Every so often grandson Ray shows up at a jam playing fine bass.
Their family still has old Ray's Ne Plus Ultra #6 (all ebony) plectrum banjo.

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Originally posted by Old Hickory

Not any one person's job to know enough about all the styles of banjo to have opinions on essential recordings. Those who participated listed their opinions of essential recordings for the type of playing they're/we're familiar with.

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In regard to the OP's specific request for lists that reflect the full range of banjo history it is revealing that every list contributed to a topic on a banjo website is exclusively U.S. I don't buy the 'not everyone is an expert' excuse. In regard to banjo history a person doesn't need to be an expert to know that the banjo story was equally and independently the product of U.S and  U.K. popular activity c.1843- 1930. The introduction of the banjo to England by American touring musicians was a 'genie out of the bottle' moment. Subsequent to that very early 1843 introduction banjo playing and repertoire developed simultaneously and independently in the U.S. and U.K.; not secondary or subservient to the U.S. Simultaneous, separate development (with mutual influence) shaped by the British social context.

Your comment really only holds up if you are saying that American banjo players aren't aware of this duel regional development. That would be an immense gap in their undestanding (and respect for) the history of the banjo.

The reason for the incredulity this statement is met with here is the extent to which banjo history has been rewritten by Americans to build the totem of the banjo as solely America's instrument. What is external to this narrative is minimised to the point of neglect. The absurdity from an English perspective is not American disinterest, it is how this selective narrative denies English an understanding of the extent of their own unique banjo heritage. Since the 1960's this incomplete historic narrative has convinced British interest that the banjo is bluegrass and old-time to the neglect of our own historic genius. It is a niche example of the process of dominant narrative in plain sight. Sadly.
 

I enjoy playing old-time but it is not and never can be a form that I as an English musician can have cultural ownership of. It is not my heritage.

My cultural ownership and banjo heritage and repertoire is Spratt, Ballantine, Vane, F.G. Chapman, Daniels, Angel, Heath, Tilley, Read, Nice, Spencer, Newton, Payne, Morris,  Pepper, Woods, Ellis, Greenop and many, many more. Through to the recorded banjoists of the 1900's- 1930's and later in the 1950's the late-bloom genius of Middleton, and R.W White. Also the thousands of grassroots composers of unpublished original English banjo music.