Dom Flemons's Blog

 

 

 

Also in making this compilation I wanted to create links to the blues.  My first experience with the Black Banjo Gathering in 2005 brought this very aspect to the light.  Before then, I had never associated string band music and the like to the older songsters that I had enjoyed who were lumped into the blues category.  Hopefully this will open more people to the idea that blues, country, jazz and string band music held a common history early on and that it should  be explored more with the recordings that are already available. 

 

All of the pieces except for Gus Cannon's "Old Blue" are available on iTunes.  Unfortunately, I received this piece from my friend Peter Siegel and it is not commercially available.  The only thing to keep in mind with that piece is that Cannon plays it on the banjo the same way Jim Jackson plays it on the guitar.

 

 

After Gus Cannon:

 

Songster and non-dance ballads:  This first section is dedicated to the songsters singing songs that are not fully dance-oriented.  Blues singing was developed through this older style through tunes like Old Blue, John Henry, Stackalee & Railroad Bill.

1 Old Blue- Gus Cannon

This piece I got from an old-time banjo player named Peter Siegel.  He recorded Cannon at a Friends of Old-Time Music concert in New York City in the early 60's and when I met him a few years ago he mentioned this tune to me.  It was the only time he himself had ever seen or heard Gus Cannon play "old-time" or "clawhammer" banjo.

2 Old Blue- Jim Jackson

Thirty years earlier, Jim Jackson recorded this version on a commercial record.  Jim Jackson played on the same medicine show circuit as Cannon in Memphis during the 1920's.  Notice the similarities in each of their versions even though Jackson plays it on the guitar.  Jackson's is best-known for making the first recording of the blues standard "Kansas City Blues".

3 Old Blue- Dink Roberts

Notice the "regional" difference between Cannon and Jackson's Memphis version of Old Blue compared to Dink Roberts' North Carolina version.  While it is almost the exact same text there are many things that Dink presents in this performance that are particular to his region of North Carolina.  These things include the speed, general groove and where he chooses to improvise around his vocal.

4 Mississippi County Farm Blues- Son House

This recording of Son House was only recovered a few years ago.  This is the famous "missing" record that House told folklorists in the 60's that he had recorded back in the 30's.  This record shows House playing in an older style of guitar that is far more reminiscent of contemporaries like Charlie Patton than on any of his other recordings.  Notice the way that this tune retains many banjo-like qualities on the guitar even though it is clearly in the blues form.  House would later teach and inspire many blues musicians including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson.

5 Shrimp Man- (Red Hot) Old Man Mose

This piece shows another way the older banjo styles were being transformed as America reached the Ragtime and Jazz Eras.  There is little information about this recording.  Its clear that the singer is not singing and playing at the same time and his vocal style suggests that he is from an earlier generation of singer. 6-string banjo player Papa Charlie Jackson accompanys this singer adding little touchs of jazz to the obviously older song form.  Like Gus Cannon's recording session with Blind Blake, the two musicians may have just met at the session and made these records on the fly.  This was a common practice for the record companies when they needed to "doctor up" the music.  This was a way for them to sell the older performer to a "modern" audience that might consider their style too antiquated.  This is a street vending song about selling Shrimp and how they're Red Hot.

 

Dancing half: This half of the presentation is dedicated to the actual dance music being played by guitar songsters that are informed by the older banjo styles.

6 Square Dance Corner (Liza Jane)- Pete Harris

Pete Harris was 33 years old when he recorded for John Lomax in 1934 in East TX.  He was a contemporary square dance musician and this recording shows Harris singing the square dance calls.  Notice the guitar being frailed like a banjo for the dance rhythm.  It is also interesting to compare this style of playing with some of the more well-known Texas songsters such as Leadbelly and Mance Lipscomb who also played the reels and square dances early on in their lives.

7 The Fox & The Hounds- Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas

Here we have the same dance set being called in 1927 by another East Texas musician Henry Thomas on a commercial record.  This was seven years before Pete Harris recorded his version for the Library of Congress.  Notice the same regional asthetics in their performances.  It also interesting to hear the different way they approach the instrumental breaks between the calls where a fiddler usually would be.  Thomas uses the quills as his fiddle on this piece which fills out the sound while Harris uses yodeling to get the same effect.

8 Walk In The Parlor- Sid Hemphill & Lucius Smith

Henry Thomas' use of the quills in place of a fiddle was not a completely foreign idea at the time.  Here we have Sid Hemphill and Lucius Smith from the hill country of Mississippi playing quills and 5-string banjo.  Recorded by Alan Lomax in the late 50's, Hemphill and Smith play a hypnotic version of Walk In The Parlor.  This was a piece that Hemphill told Lomax he had to phase out of his repetoire because it was considered "too old-fashioned" to suit the popular tastes of his community.  Hemphill was said to have played fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, quills, fife, snare drum and bass drum and toured all over the South with a group that served as both a string band and a fife & drum band.  Lomax recorded them playing pieces in every instrument configuration. 

9 Buttermilk- Miles & Bob Pratcher
 

During this same trip, Alan Lomax, after having recorded Hemphill and Smith, recorded several contemporary musicians from the next town over.  It was here that he first recorded the fife and drum music of Ed and Lonnie Young, the blues of Mississippi Fred McDowell, and he also recorded this string band duo, Miles and Bob Pratcher.  Even though the banjo has gone by the wayside in the music, all of the rhythmic elements are still there in the guitar playing.  It is a smokin' combination and it only gets better once the dancers come in.  Eventually, the fiddle would be replaced by the harmonica and many early Southern harmonica players such as DeFord Bailey and Noah Lewis would retain qualities of the older fiddle music in their playing.   

10 Runnin' Wild Blues- Charlie Patton

Now we'll take it back about 30 years.  Here is Mississippi songster Charlie Patton playing a style of string band music very similar to that of the Pratchers with a fiddler named Henry Simms.  Charlie Patton would go on to be one of the most influencial musicians in the Delta.  Simms had a very different path he went down.  He recorded a few tracks with Patton on this session for commercial records in 1928 but he would only get a chance to record again for The Library of Congress in 1942 with his string band.  Simms would never record again but his guitar player, McKinley Morganfield, would go on become one of the most popular bluesmen of his generation, Muddy Waters.

  
11 Guitar Lesson- Jesse Fuller

When I first heard this piece taken from another Friends of Old-Time Music concert, it really gave me an impression of how the guitar syle of black songsters changed when the blues became popular and how the community's popular tastes dictated that change.  Open E tuning is also known as KC Tuning.  This is a tuning that many banjo players used when transitioning over to the guitar.  For Fuller, it only takes the fellow telling him that he is not in style to make him change what he is already playing.  He is approached by the fellow who challenges his style and outdoes him with slide guitar.  It seems that at this point the guitar had connected into the black community's musical needs of the time making itself the "standard" instrument for the blues.  One could also now play both fiddle and banjo parts at the same time giving the performer new freedom to play a more diverse style of music.

12 Sevassafool- Gus Gibson & Sidney Stripling

 

This is a brilliant recording by John Work III showing the two instruments side by side.  Slide guitar and banjo.  Both parts connecting now but only one leading to the future.