Re: Blues by banjoists born before 1890

On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:11:33 -0700 (PDT), tonythomas <...@hotmail.com

One last point:
believe that blues banjo by the oldest musicians is quite similar to
Date: Thurs, Apr 9 2009 11:46 am
From: j_ns...@msn.com

These are some blues recordings by banjoists who were born
before 1890:

Samantha Bumgarner "The Worried Blues"
Dick Burnett "Curly Headed Woman" by Burnett and Rutherford
Gus Cannon "Minglewood Blues"
Percy Darensburg "Sunshine Special" by Frenchy's String Band
Nathan Frazier "Corrinne"
Charles Gobert "Can't Put On My Shoes" by Wilson Jones
Charlie Higgins "Lee County Blues" by Higgins and Ward
Steady Roll Johnson "Newport Blues"
Dave Macon "Hill Billie Blues"
Oddie McWinders "Long Tall Mamma Blues" by Jimmie Rodgers
Glen Smith "Going Down The Road"
Josh Thomas "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues"
Marion Underwood "All Night Long" by Byrd Moore

I believe that blues banjo by the oldest musicians is quite similar to
blues guitar by the oldest musicians in that the instrument is
generally played very staccato compared to T-Bone Walker-era guitar.

Joseph Scott//

Joseph Scott does not understand that African American Music and
European American music are different things. My comments are about
African American banjoists playing for African American audiences, not
European Americans. Scott may not understand that there is a
difference, but in the real world there is tremendous difference
today, and a greater difference in the ways that African Americans and
European Americans in the South played music. Someone who does not
get this cannot be expected to get much else!

I would admit that everything I said was about African American
musicians and music and no such problems occur for White players of
the five string banjo because the dancing that white musicians in the
Southeast played by and large was different than what Black people
danced to. Once again in the real world, everyone who bothered to ask
Black people about this says that this all changed when the dancing
changed. Dancing did not change for European Americans and you can
find hundreds of recordings in which European Americans play Blues on
the five string banjo from the initial recordings in the 1920s to a
Bluegrass band I was listening to last night live on WMMT in
Whitesburg.

His few Black examples speak to the real issues involved. Of course,
none of these recordings come from the formative period of Blues in
the late 19th century or early 20th Century. None of the banjoists
are playing gut string instruments like those available to banjoists
in the early days. In fact the Cannon recording he refers to was done
on January 30, 1928, the Frazier recording in the mid 1940s, and Josh
Thomas in 1970. None of these recordings except Cannon were issued as
commercial Blues records for African American or any other
purchasers. There were thousands of Black Blues records in the 1920s
and 1930s. WHY WERE CANNONS’ THE ONLY ONES USING FIVE STRING
BANJO?

I have played blues with bassoon and cello and oboe players over the
years, but that these blues can be played on these instruments, I
cannot deny. I also testify that from the evening I took my first
Good Time home, I have played blues well on modern steel string
banjos, and better on resonator five strings. I am not denying that
anyone can play Blues on such instruments. The discussion is over
whether the guitar or the banjo is a preferable instrument to play the
Blues on. My meaning of the blues is not any Blues, but the dance
rhythms that African Americans identified with the blues. This
identification of the Blues with such rhythms and with the guitar
replacing the banjo because of this is a commonly accepted reason for
the end of the five—string banjo by Black five-string banjoists and
their audiences.

The question is not one to debate, but proved in practice by thousands
of African American musicians, long before Tee-Bone Walker began
recording Electric blues with Big Bands. You would think that this was
in question with hoards of African American blues banjoists playing
the music until the 1940s.

BTW Scott speaks about “Butch Cage and his peers.” Can Scott explain
why on all the recordings he did with Butch Cage in Louisiana and in
folk tours why Willie B. Thomas played guitar and not five-string
banjo. He was an excellent five-string banjo player and played five-
string when Oster recorded them and thereafter. In the new CD
addition of Oster’s recordings of Cage and Thomas, there is a nice
picture of Thomas playing a modern five-string banjo with his children
watching. Why didn’t he play the banjo to accompany Cage? Why did so
many African Americans who did play the five string banjo like Memphis
Minnie or Bo Carter not use it for Blues? Why did other performers
like Deford Bailey who was an excellent five-string banjo player play
all his Blues selections on guitar or harmonic and reserve the banjo
only for old time songs like John Henry or Lost John????????

Indeed, why doesn’t anyone on this planet but Joseph Scott think the
things about this?

Let me take up the Black examples I am familiar with that he raises.
This involves three songs, again, only one of them a commercially
released Blues.

Nathan Frazier "Corrinne"

No one who listens to this version of Corrine—a tune I have listened
to many times for many years—that comes from the mid 1940s, can think
it has anything to do with the typical patterns and dances that
African Americans dance the blues to. Any listener will find it like
a number of other recordings by the surviving Upper South Black
Banjoists of Blues songs is played at the same pace (at a virtuosi
pace by the great Frazier) that old time dance tunes are done. Try to
do the slow drag, the dance identified with the Blues even in the
Upper South, to this tune. There is no comparison with what one can
take as the UR version of this song on recordings, that of the
Mississippi sheiks. So while this is a blues tune, it is not played
in a manner African Americans would consider blues. Moreover, unlike
the white examples, save Gus Cannon’s recording, this was not a
commercial recording. Whatever his birth, Frazier’s great performance
took place nearly two decades after the song had become a very popular
tune with recordings by the Mississippi Sheiks and nearly a decade
after recordings based on the Sheiks tunes by the GREAT Milton Brown
and the GREATER Bob Wills.

Stu Jamison who recorded this, told me that the band was largely

I could add about 20 other instances I know about of African American
clawhammer players from the upper South who play blues tunes exactly
in the manner of the rest of the string band repertoire that would be
suited for old time dancing. The generally alter the melody to reduce
the chord changes and the differences in articulating the verse and do
not have the variations in measures, accents and beats that
characterize African American Blues performances. This includes
banjoists who were also blues guitarists who play quite Blues
danceable Blues on the guitar. Rufus Kasey who plays many blues in
the string band style on the Digital Library of Appalachia and in
field recordings I have heard by Bob Winans and Cece Conway, does play
the blues a different way on the banjo, modeled exactly like his
brother and father played blues finger style on guitar. This is
captured in a forthcoming film on Rufus by Cece Conway.

Of course, I have also heard Polka Bands, Mexican Cojuntos, and Quebec
folk bands play tunes that fit into the broad category of Blues but
are playing them in the genre that they play in. No African Americans
who danced to the blues in the early 20th Century would dance to them,
but I guess, Joseph Scott would try to prove that the polka, Norteno,
and Quebecois music are part of the Blues in the same way that Gus
Cannon was.

Josh Thomas "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues"

Unfortunately, this recording is not available to the public.
Josh Thomas was recorded in 1970. The banjo he used in these
recordings which I have played myself, thanks to Mike Seeger, was a
resonator banjo, the kind of inexpensive Asian import RB that became
available in the late 1960s in response to the folk revival and the
expanding popularity of bluegrass

Thomas is the proof of the pudding so to speak. He was a
magnificent clawhammer player. His music was probably highly Blues
influenced of any Black banjoist I have heard, not only in his Blues,
but in the way he played old-time songs and religious songs. Unlike
Joseph Scott, Thomas realized that there was a problem playing Blues
or blues-like Gospel tunes in the same way that he played old time
dance tunes, because the need was not abstractly for Blues that would
fit Joseph Scott’s schema, but playing what African Americans
considered blues based on the dance beats they required. So Thomas
jumps out of clawhammer playing to install brushing and strumming to
try to manufacture the Blues beat and gospel beat. He does this on
several Gospel songs which really fall into the same category as well.
It sounds pretty unsatisfying compared to the great clawhammer he
plays. I have never heard anyone else play the blues on the banjo
this way, although I have tried to make my humble effort to learn
Thomas’s approach.

As far as I know, Gus Cannon is the only African American five-string
banjoist who was commercially recorded playing Blues in a style that
fit in with African American blues dance and beats. He played a
number of other blues besides Minglewood. His playing on Blues do
tend to suffer from the problems that led the guitar and the piano,
not the five-string banjo to be the chief instrument used by African
Americans to play blues.

Cannon only recorded one blues on a solo banjo, his first
paramount recording “Jonestown Blues,” which when he had a choice, he
recorded. None of his recordings of Blues were done as solo banjo,
even when he went to the Paramount studios to be recorded as a single
act. They had to bring in Blind Blake to accompany him on every one
of the Blues, as well as every other tune but one. In Chicago Cannon
was asked to record while he was on tour with a minstrel show, not
back in the Memphis area, his area of musical operations. Even in the
medicine shows, Banjo Joe as he was called, usually teamed up in a
string band with Jim Jackson, Furry Lewis, and other guitarists,
apparently using his banjo with several guitars. In working dances in
the country outside of Memphis which was the real center of his music
making, Cannon usually played in a string band with guitarists, six-
string and mandolin banjoists, and jug players including him?

The problem is that the high timbre and lack of any bass on
the five string and four string banjo make it not a very good
instrument for playing slower beats alone. Scott’s example of
“Minglewood Blues” is a pretty strange example. The song like most of
the Blues Cannon’s Jug Stompers performed is not by Gus Cannon but by
another band member, Hosea Wood. Cannon’s banjo stays in the
background behind Ashley Thomas impassioned vocal and his wonderful
guitar playing that has aspects of slap bass to it and Cannon’s own
Jug. Reigning over the whole piece is the magnificent harmonica of
Hosea Wood.

Several years ago Dom Flemmons now of the Carolina Chocolate Drops
pointed out that Cannon was able to solve the problem of pitch and
timbre and speed that the five-string banjo found in playing such
music because he understood the banjo had to be supplemented by bass
instruments that carried much more of the load. In most of Cannon’s
Blues and non-Blues performances the banjo was in the background,
playing a similar role to what a banjo does in a band like Charlie
Poole’s, providing the kind of riffs and picking that maintain not so
much of the beat as the syncopation of the blues. While I am inclined
to agree with Scott and others that the use of the Jug was a very late
addition and an affectation to catch onto the jug band craze, Cannon’s
jug playing throughout the recordings is pretty vital in providing a
deep bass that often plays leads and obligatos, not just rhythm and it
sounds more central to the band’s sound than the banjo..

A fairer example would be Cannon’s very first recording in Chicago in
November 1927, his solo recording of the great “Jones Town Blues” (he
later recorded with his Jug Stompers band. This is as close to a
true African American dance blues played on a five string banjo as
anyone can get. Of course, it is done on a five-string banjo with
steel strings, not the kind of banjo that Cannon would have played in
1910 or 1905. Even here, the beat is a little closer to the pop
ragtime that Cannon specialized.*

To anyone used to listening to acoustic blues recordings, the
tune sounds a bit stiff, the rhythm a bit jumpy, and the music sounds
hard to dance to. Cannon’s accompaniment on the banjo sounds high
pitched and not much of a support for his voice, even though as a
banjoist, I love his long thumb picked runs even if they do sound
quite lonely without accompaniment. The track does not have the
dancing swing and punch seen in the other recordings he did in Chicago
on which Paramount decided to bring in Blind Blake to accompany him on
Guitar or of the recording of the song that Cannon did two years later
with the Jug Stompers.

believe that blues banjo by the oldest musicians is quite similar to
blues guitar by the oldest musicians in that the instrument is
generally played very staccato compared to T-Bone Walker-era guitar.

Joseph Scott

This is pretty silly since most Blues played by African American
banjoists do not play like this Of course, there were no commercial
recordings of African American down picking five string banjoists and
few of old time finger style Black banjoists other than Gus Cannon. We
do have recordings of Black banjoists playign blues clawhammer style
as I have alluded to and none of them play in the style that Scott
claims is key. But then since he does not consider whether a player
is Black or white to be significant, perhaps he is talking about so
category that those of us who do work on this question do not think
about, because if you do not understand this disntiction you are
pretty lost and useless.

. None of the samples by Frazier or Thomas are staccato. With the
admendments that I will note that Thomas makes in his half strum have
Clawhammer it is pretty clear version of the basic clawhammer he plays
on all tunes, likewise with Frazier and his finger style. As I point
out below clawhammer indistinguishable from what is played on other
tunes is what most African American traditional banjoists do playing
blues. Another exception besides Thomas is a clip that Cece has of
Josh Thomas where he plays a blues on his banjo pretty much like a
finger style banjoist.

There is a point in this that at least among European American old
time banjoists like Dock Boggs, there is an acknowledgement that their
style was influenced by finger style Black Blues guitarists. Gus
Cannon indicated that he learned his version of "Poor Boy" from a
slide guitar player in the Mississippi Delta about 1915. Jim Jackson
and Henry Thomas do play the guitar more like a Black banjo player,
but both represent styles of guitar playing that date to the 19th
Century before steel strings were available and before much of Blues
guitar developed. The steel strings are key to the question of Blues
and the guitar

*(Earlier in this list J Scott made a useful comment when he said that
Cannon’s recorded repertoire was probably less representative of Black
rural music than the recorded repertoire of Dave Macom. Macom did
record many traditional songs, some or many of which he learned from
African Americans. However, in Cannon’s 1920s and 1930 recordings
there is only one tune—“Feather Bed”-- that is associated with the old-
time banjo and fiddle dance tradition among African Americans.

Besides the blues and country ragtime pieces, a significant part of
what Cannon recorded were songs that were directly taken from turn of
the Century Black pop music flavored by Ragtime such as “My Money
Never Runs Out,” that was written and published by New York African
American song writer Irving Jones in 1900. Paul Oliver suggests that
“Can You Blame the Colored Man” was also written by Jones. Cannon
told Oliver that he had learned it from an older player. Songs that
Cannon wrote like “Walk Right In” were written to fit into this genre
and contain allusions to Broadway and Black pop songs.

However, until his death, Cannon had a complete repertoire of
old time songs that he had learned as a child and youth in
Mississippi, songs like “Johnny Booker” and “Old Blue.”
Unfortunately, none of the better tracks that indicate how good a drop
thumb clawhammer player he was playing these tunes in the 1960s are
available to the public. The recording he did of Johnny Booker for
Charters in the 1950s is not up to the scale of the way he could play
the tune in the late 1960s. I have heard two versions of his “Old
Blue” that are not public that revival the hottest swingingest Black
clawhammer played by players like Dink Roberts and Odell Thompson.)