Why I Took Up the Banjo

Okay, I admit it. I enjoy being a bit of an odd duck. I had to. It all comes from my difficult childhood as a nerdy, skinny little kid in the local public school where they sent all the thugs and toughs deemed unworthy to attend the local church schools and the heathen children whose parents didn't go to church. The rest of us who were simply too poor went there because we had to. It was a lesson in survival skills for the meek. By embracing the identity that was forced on you by your tormentors, I learned how to deflect them. If they call you a geek, be a proud geek. This confuses most bullies and spoils their fun......except when they beat you up in frustration because their words no longer make you cry.

While we meek types may, indeed, inherit the Earth someday, it sometimes feels like we may have to pay for it in blood. I was offered the chance to play in the school band at one point, but I turned down the opportunity. In order to play a band instrument other than drums (where the thugs were well-represented), you had to stick something in your mouth and when you do that, you can't really sing along.
skinny little kid in the local public school where they sent all the thugs and toughs deemed unworthy to attend the local

I took up instrumental music in 1971 when I bought a damaged Mexican guitar for $6 and fixed the bridge. It worked beautifully and made even my pitiful efforts sound good when I could actually get the thing in tune. It took me two years to develop a good enough ear to actually hear what in tune sounded like. Till then, I tuned my guitar visually by depressing the top string on the fifth fret, plucking it and adjusting the next string down till it vibrated when I picked the string above it. I learned this technique in physics class - I was that big a nerd.

They called me two-chord Tom and used to pay me to play elsewhere. When my guitar playing finally became tolerable enough that I was allowed to play with the guys at campfire at my summer camp job, I was offered an old used cheap banjo. No longer the obnoxious amateur guitarist I had once been, I jumped at the chance to revisit my halcyon days as an out-of-tune ballad singer via the banjo.

After 40 years of banging away at it, I can play well enough that folk don't run screaming from the room, although my wife (Miss Perfect Pitch) tends to keep putting it way in the back of the closet if she finds it left unattended for more than a few minutes.

Ah, well, I can always go to the woods or sit out on the porch, a spot to which generations of itinerant banjo players have been traditionally banished. That's okay. I like the porch and the woods.

More scope for the imagination.   — © 2014 by Tom King

Banjo Proves Vital Instrument in Survival of Shackleton Expedition

Dr. Leonard Hussey's Banjo is preserved by the London Maritime Museum

Brett and Kay McKay mentioned an unusual bit of banjo history in their post today on The Art of Manliness.  Apparently Dr. Leonard Hussey, meteorologist and a member of the ill-fated 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton, owned a five-string banjo. He brought it along on the expedition and played it frequently, leading crew sing-alongs on board the expedition's ship Endurance - at least until Endurance became wedged in the ice and began to break up. Shackleton ordered the men to abandon ship.  His plan?  To hike 346 miles across the ice to Paulet Island dragging 2 lifeboats weighing a ton each and from there to row to the South American mainland.

Dr. Hussey

Shackleton ordered the men to leave behind everything except 2 pounds worth of personal possessions. The men were forced to ditch money, jewelry, extra clothes and keepsakes. The only things allowed to exceed the two pound limit were the surgeons' medical supplies and Leonard Hussey's 12-pound banjo. The thing was practically an anvil next to what the others were allowed, but Shackleton ordered it lashed underneath one of the lifeboats and brought along.

Shackleton called Hussey's banjo “vital mental medicine” and told the crew they would need it before their long and grueling journey ended. Later, Shackleton would credit Hussey and his banjo as “a vital factor in chasing away symptoms of depression” in the crew during the long journey and subsequent sea voyage.

Autographs of the Shackleton crew on Hussey's banjo.

Steve Martin once said, “The banjo is such a happy instrument–you can’t play a sad song on the banjo –it always comes out so cheerful.”  You can be singing about the most awful things and it still sounds cheerful. Hussey apparently shared some of the same characteristics as his instrument of choice. Shackleton said this about Hussey in his book.  " The demons of depression could find no foothold when he was around; and, not content with merely "telling," he was "doing" as much as, and very often more than, the rest. He showed wonderful capabilities of leadership and more than justified the absolute confidence that I placed in him. Hussey, with his cheeriness and his banjo, was another vital factor in chasing away any tendency to downheartedness."

So next time you go on an expedition or even a vacation, consider leaving behind the extra fancy outfits you'll never wear and the 20 pound bottle of shampoo (the hotels have little bottles of shampoo and they replace them every day). Instead, invest 12 pounds of luggage weight and bring along your banjo. Who knows, it may turn out to be instrumental to your survival!

One final note on the banjo itself.  The instrument is called a 5-string banjo, but the headstock looks like a six string classical guitar headstock. A banjo type of the time called a banjo-zither had this type of headstock and Hussey's banjo may have been something like the modern six-string banjo made popular by LeAnn Rimes, Keith Urban and Robert Plant.  It can be played like a guitar, but has the sound and durability of a banjo.  If anyone has more information drop me a note.  The banjo itself as displayed in the museum only has 4 strings as you can see, but there seems to be the faint shadow of a fifth string on the head. The banjo-zither was a sturdy wooden backed design with six tuning pegs. It generally was strung with only five strings, but could accommodate a sixth.  Can't tell for sure if this one has a wooden back.  The company in Britain that is making a Shackleton tribute banjo that's an open back traditional 5-string. One commenter on the site did say the Hussey banjo was a banjo-zither.

Whatever it was, apparently the "glory-beaming banjo" as Twain called it, saved the day for Shackleton and his boys.  Pretty cool, little piece of history.

© 2013 by Tom King

Goodbye Earl - We'll See You On the Other Shore



Earl Scruggs (1924-2012)


Earl Scruggs passed away yesterday. We all knew he would, but it wasn't something you like to think about as a banjo player. Earl was the standard by which we all measured ourselves as banjo-players. Even though he was in his late 80s, the man could still strike fire on a banjo.

Earl made bluegrass music what it is today. Without him the genre might look very different. He helped bluegrass become an inclusive music. His example inspired the likes of Bela Flek, Steve Martin and Alison Krausse. He played with everybody from Joan Baez to Bob Dylan to Elton John and thousands of others who played in all sorts of apparently incompatible musical styles.

We were all blessed, not only by his talent, but by his generosity as a musician.  I once watched a youtube video from the 60s of Earl jamming with a group of bluegrass musicians. A couple of the young bucks, you could tell wanted to try and dominate the session, but Earl just smiled that easy, unconcerned smile of his and played on unconcerned. Many got the privilege of playing with him (it's an extraordinary list of musicians. I don't think Earl ever missed an opportunity to play with someone whose music he liked, no matter how odd the duet might be. Most who did were just happy to be there with him.

He was never a snob, though with his skill, he could have been quite easily.  Instead, he seemed to truly relish moments in a jam session, when the younger musicians, would take off on their own riff with some bit of technical virtuosity - the way a father would take pride in his child who was trying to show off. It seemed to make him happy to watch them go! A true talent does not need to hog the spotlight and Earl never did that I saw. But somehow, the spotlight always came back to this simple, unassuming man in the end. A gracious man and good friend to every man, woman or child who plays the banjo.


We miss him already!

Tom

Banjos on the Sea of Glass.......

(c) 2010 by Tom King

A preacher found himself dead one day and next thing he knew he was standing at the Pearly Gates. His angel guide ushered him in and took him to his living quarters. To his confusion, his new "home" was a tent in a large tent city at the base of the hill on which the city was built. It was a nice tent with all the amenities he could want, but it was, after all, a tent.

He looked up the hill and saw some pretty nice houses on the slope above the tent city.

"Who lives up there?" he asked his angel guide.

"Well, that lower section with all the condos is the section for tax attorneys," his guide explained.  "Above that are defense attorneys in the split-level ranch homes, auto mechanics in the brownstones and politicians in the McMansions."

Bewildered the pastor asked, "Why the fancier places for those guys? I mean, after all, I was a preacher all my life. I worked hard to get here."

"Well, we go by how hard it was for you to get here," the angel explained. "Preachers are a dime a dozen here and we've got three rows of bishops just the next street over and don't start me on the tent evangelists. It's hard to find a place for all you guys!"

The pastor looked further up the hill and pointed to a glittering mansion at the top of the hill. "Who's up there?" he asked.

"That's Earl Scruggs," his guide smiled.

"What did he do to deserve a house like that?" the preacher gasped. "I mean, I like his music and all and he inspired millions to take up the banjo, but how does that earn him any special merit here?"

"That's just it, the angel explained with tears in his eyes. "That man did so much to relieve the overcrowding in this place...."

Post-Modernism, Banjos and Metaphysical Literature

I was trying to explain post-modernism to someone the other day, so I looked it up.  One definition was this: "Post-modernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative".
 
Another place says that post-modernism is a reaction against the rationality of modernism and the expectation that progress is inevitable or even possible.  
The best definition of post-modernism I ever saw was a bumper sticker that said, "S.......t  happens!"  You'll have to fill in the first word as it's uncouth and is not allowed by my own pre-modernistic belief system.

Post-modernism, as nearly as I can tell is the trend in literature and the arts, philosophy and music that, where the modernist says things make sense if you puzzle them out and that we can actually improve things, the postmodernist artist says, "Uhn Uh!"

Postmodernism has crept into the American culture in insidious ways giving us trendy movies in which nothing happens, no lesson is learned and there is really no reason for watching the movie other than a morbid curiousity about pointless lives depicted in the movie.

So what has this got to do with the banjo - an instrument associated with the most moralizing body of musical works in history.  I mean wretched people do tend to die in banjo tunes or, at least, if good people die, somebody usually sticks on a moral in the last verse to rationalize it all.

Post-modernism is relentlessly miserable and why not? The post-modernist sees no point in anything anyway, so what's he got to be cheerful about?

Banjo music, however, sounds relentlessly cheerful even when the lyrics are the most mournful words ever laid down on paper. Your girl may have left you, you may be broke and your dog may have died, but the banjo plunks along all the while reminding you that somewhere in the world there's a little bit of fun to be had and that the song is driving relentlessly to its end anyway, so buck up!

Actually, nobody else has written anything else about postmodern banjo, so I figured this would get me my own first page on Google Search (if you happen to be searching for "postmodern banjo").  Wait till the search engines get a load of this title! Note I've deliberately used both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated spelling of postmodernism so that either way you Google search it, the web crawler robots will have this post catalogued.  Also, I'll stick it on my Banjo Hangout website so it gets maximum exposure too and I'll add a link back to this site for no other reason than to get even more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) points.

Truth is, this post has no other purpose other than to get people to look at it and go "Huh?" 

My first foray into post-modernist literature!  Maybe next time I'll write one about "Peanut Butter and the Bedpan Ukelele".  Who knows, maybe that one will wind up a reference in someone's doctoral thesis on postmodern literature.  I can see the title now, "The Impact of Postmodernist Thought on the Metaphysicality of Banjo Hangout Forum Posts During the Late Mike Gregory Era".  

Hey, I can dream can't I? 

Tom

Banjo Snobs

July 5, 2010 -

Snobs make me tired.

A gentleman I know on another banjo forum, recently complained that he had been 'schooled' by old-timey and bluegrass players about his unusual playing style his granddaddy used that a relation of his taught him recently.  He's getting older now and would like to teach someone else how to play this way so the style is not lost.  It's apparently the opinion of some banjo wags that the style has no value since it's not "authentic".  It uses an up pluck followed by a frail and thumb pluck variant similar to clawhammer, but with a different feel to it.

I told him he needs to find someone to teach the style to - preferably kinfolk, but at least leave someone behind who knows how to play it. There are lots of folks out there who would love to pick up a little known authentic style.  Even if it's a style that belongs to just one family, it's a valid and authentic way to play banjo.

Heck, if there's a group out in the hills of West Virginia that play the banjo with their noses while swinging naked from a tree, who's to say the style is not authentic?   If that's your style, find some kinfolk you can teach it to and tell 'em you'll leave them your banjo when you're gone - all they have to do is pick up the playing style and pass it on.

The folk purists make me tired.  They take an art form (folk music) and try to add rules as to what is correct and what is not when, in fact, any style of playing that produces interesting music is "authentic".  Bluegrass grew from a lot of traditions, plucking (if you will), the sounds from several old-time styles, adding some innovations by "folk" like Earl Scruggs and passing it along to a new generation. Really good musicians often learn a variety of styles. 

I encouraged Alex, to at least record some of his music on video and post it to Youtube so that it doesn't get lost.  He should record some "how-to" teaching videos so that anyone who wants to learn the style can look at his videos and learn to play the style.  Look how many great songs would have been lost if the Lomax brothers hadn't run around all over the countryside with a tape recorder.  "Home on the Range" for instance would never have survived to this day without them.  How many other songs and musical styles have been lost because they were never recorded.

Who cares if some tin-pot banjo tyrant says your style isn't authentic. I don't care if he is a musicologist.  There isn't a musicologist worth his salt that can know every type of music that's out there, much less tell you what style is right and what is "wrong".

If you've got a unique style or your family has their own songs or traditions, do what you can to preserve it. Get it all down on tape or video and post it in the great eternal Internet archives.  Save the videos on DVD too and get copies into the hands of as many sympathetic banjo players as possible. Make preserving your family's style of banjo playing (if they have one) your legacy to your family and to traditional banjo music.

Some of the anger that odd duck banjo players get, whether from bluegrass, clawhammer or old-time people is because some players get pretty snooty about their own "authenticity" and somehow come to regard themselves as the guardians of banjo purity.  They try to "school" bluegrass banjo players of clawhammer or old-time or independent backwoods plucky-frailers because their style is "wrong", "not authentic" (you're wearing the wrong hat while you play) or "too commercial".

When are people going to stop practicing this sad form of banjo socialism.  A Greek dictator (they called them tyrants back in those days) went to visit another dictator to find out how to keep his people in line.  The second tyrant took him into a field of corn and sent his slaves into the field with knives. The slaves cut off the heads of any stalk of corn that stuck above the others till they had mown the field to a flat uniformity.  The beauty of this method, the dictator explained, was that once the people became used to the uniformity, the "regular" stalks would start cutting the heads off the tall stalks for you - you'd no longer have to do it yourself.

When are we going to realize that the more different styles there are out there, the more banjo players there will be and the more new and innovative music you're going to hear. If we open it up to every old tradition and new-fangled innovation, we keep banjo playing from becoming an ossified, stuck in mud "art" form, hemmed in by pseudo-traditions about what we can and cannot do. Doesn't anyone hear how stupid we sound when we try to argue about what's right and wrong in banjo playing.

This is the banjo for heaven sakes. The thing started out as a string a stick and a gourd for crying out loud. The banjo's music has from the beginning been all about making it up as you go. It's the height of arrogance to get caught up in an argument over what's "right" and what's "wrong" about the way anybody plays the banjo.  It is enough that they play it and it's even more cool that they bring their own artistic sense to the playing.

Nothing kills a musical style or instrument faster than to hem it about with rigid rules about what is acceptable playing and what is not. I get just as excited about some grizzled old farmer flailing away on a ratty old fretless using a stile his granddaddy invented as I do about some so-called "authentic" old-timey band with the proper hats and shoes, or about Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck or Roy Clark.  I even enjoy Rocky Top, Dueling Banjos and Cripple Creek. I've heard them done so many different ways I can't count and I never get tired of hearing what the next guy is going to do to them.

It's all cool.  What I say about it is simply, "Let them banjos ring!  (or plunk, twang, hammer on or roll like machine gun fire for that matter). 

I'm just sayin'.

Tom King

* We called this style "Hairgrass" - a variant of 70's hair bands only played while barefoot and wearing a tie with washtub bass, guitar, banjo and flute and gospel music.  It was early in the summer, so my hair hadn't grown out much yet, though I had a good start on my beard (I'm the banjo player).  I went to a Christian academy and we had to shave and trim during the school year.  So summers we all got hairy mostly because we could and also because it made our elders nervous.  

Nearer My Banjo to Thee (Going Down With The Ship)

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

An acousitic jam session on a pontoon boat in the middle of Lake Tyler sounded like fun, so we all picked up guitars, fiddles, banjos and other implements of destruction and climbed aboard Naomi's leaky pontoon boat and struck out across the lake. Two of the musicians were Gordon and Christy McLeod of the Celtic Group Beyond the Pale. There was a bank president with a guitar, a nonprofit director and guitar, her husband (an unarmed architect), Naomi who was driving the boat, me with my banjo, guitar and assortment of harmonicas and a couple of innocent bystanders. We banged our way through bluegrass, Irish songs, country, western and an assortment of other nondescript tunes, serenading the rich folks sitting out on their very expensive porches in their very expensive houses that lined this exclusive lakefront. We were having a good time.

Gordon got out his fiddle and he and I did a fiddle & banjo rendition of the Jimi Hendrix version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". Gordon can play just about anything and I did my best to follow. During the set, a couple of our heavier passengers moved forward in the pontoon boat (probably in an effort to distance themselves from the band in the back and any projectiles that might be launched or fired in their direction by irate East Texans along the shore.

As about 400 pounds of ballast moved toward the bow, however, the lead edge of the pontoons caught a wave and drove under the water. Naomi panicked and shoved the throttle forward, pushing the bow even further beneath the waves. As a low wall of water came rushing over the bow, everyone on the boat grabbed their instruments and held them over their heads, wondering how they were going to swim a half mile to the nearest shore while holding their guitars out of the water. Someone grabbed my guitar and held it to her chest like a flotation device. I tried to get it back, but unfortunately, nothing that would float was safe from the panicked nonswimmers aboard who were preparing to abandon ship with anything that looked remotely buoyant.

Fortunately, before my guitar became a canoe, I managed to convince Naomi that speeding up would probably not be helpful and as the propellers came out of the water she backed off the throttle. Since the boat appeared to be beginning its death dive, someone wiseacre with remarkable presence of mind began playing "Nearer My God to Thee" and the rest of us (not to be out smart-alecked) quickly joined in.

The nice thing about having the props out of the water, was that we stopped accelerating toward the bottom almost immediately and the boat lost momentum and settled back by the stern with a thumping great splash. We got the engine shut down and her bow popped back up streaming water from the decks.

Without pause we launched into "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and Naomi turned us toward home.

Since then, we've held our hootenannies on the dock or someplace where we don't need lifejackets. Some who have attended them, hoping to hear music have offered to take us all out again on various leaky boats, rafts and other potential submersibles.

As my grandpa used to say, "Some people got no sense of humor...."

Tom