Nuther One

Courtesy of Kat...

I just discovered this

Picture courtesy of Hugo Dann in his friend's Montreal apartment, uploaded straight from my computer. It's my favourite banjo portrait. That of course is the beloved Deering Long Neck. It seems I don't have to steal images from other sites anymore. But the question remains: Does Flickr provide better quality?

The Sound of Banjo Boya

Here's the English translation, courtesy of Google, without assistance from me. I can't hear any banjo in there, but it sures sounds good...
And here is the original web page.
Actually, upon further examination, I don't think this is Banjo Boya's Band, but rather another band called Southern Train. But they have Banjo Boya's support, and so they have Banjo Banjar's support too...

Charlie Poole

Possibly the best early banjo collection I've ever heard. Carl's got a nice review in the Globe and Mail, but you'll have to pay for it at this point.

(The Guardian, the Independent, and the New York Times – even its Magazine – can all be perused for free at your leisure, but that flying buttress sailing so nobly above the column, that towering colossus of International Journalism, the Toronto Globe and Mail, home to Christie Blatchford and Marcus Gee and Leah McLaren, makes you pay. They ain't talkin to me I guess, and I ain't talkin to them.)

Not only is this an exhaustive collection of Charlie Poole's music, but it also includes the players that he liked and listened to, the players who listened to him (including David Macon) and, most edifying of all, earlier versions of songs that he adapted, side by side with his interpretations. It's all spelled out in the accompanying booklet. All in all, a beautiful structure. One might go so far as to call it a flying buttress above the towering column of early banjo-recordings, etc. It tops the earlier Dock Boggs collection, which is saying a lot.

More on Hedy West

I grew up with a big Folkways Collection of records that made a big impact on me and brought me inexorably to the banjo and the clawhammer style years later in my adult life. The collection included Hedy West singing Cotton Mill Girls, a song and a style that stood out with clarity, simplicity and beauty from what was already an impressive collection. I learned the song pretty much by osmosis and later played it on the banjo, straight-up frailing.

Then later, for awhile, I had an instruction book by Ken Perlman called Melodic Clawhammer Style banjo. There were contributions by various banjo players in there along with their pictures. But there was also a great pic of Hedy West without any accompanying tab. I always figured he included the photo because she was so beautiful, though I always wondered whether there'd been a tab that got cut out in the editing process.

Those were the only two things I knew about Hedy West. I used to sing Cotton Mill Girls all the time, with Brendan Wall and Anne Lederman, as part of the pre-show warm-up to our outdoor extravaganza on the life of the Donnellys that we did in Blyth. Like many people, I assumed that I had learned this song from Hedy West but that she had not written it. I assumed it was traditional. But it wasn't. She'd written it. It was her song.

That's the best I can do for an appreciation. Wish I could do better.

More of the Musical Saw

A couple more images of the musical saw, since I couldn't find a good one of Melissa Swingle for my review.
The top pic is Marlene Dietrich, of all people, from a German site.

And this one shows the essential curve to get the full range of notes, in silhouette...

And this one's just the best...

And here's Melissa Swingle, with the essential car trunk but without the saw...
And that's a post...

Cox

I had 42 hits yesterday, and a comment deep down in the posts from this banjo player. She must have a lot of pull.



That's her CD cover up top. I like that song Rachael a lot.

Wrong-Eyed Review

Carl asked what I thought of that movie. I think he's trying to coax me to be a better blogger. I answered him in the Comments section, but Kat has convinced me to make it a bona fide post. So here it is.

I didn't like it at first, and it ultimately wasn't what it claimed to be - that is a musical odyssey through the south (or perhaps that's merely what I claimed it to be?) since the same faces kept popping up over and over again - primarily the Handsome Family and Johnny Dowd. But it did have something - I'll get to that in a minute.



Very nice was Melissa Swingle showing up and playing the saw like a master, and then telling a sad and funny story without a HINT of mirth. Almost worth the price of admission that was, right down to the two figures who walked out of the woods to listen to her play. I knew that was staged but I didn't mind.



A lot of stuff was staged, in fact, in the beginning, and I wasn't sure I was going to like the company of Jim White. But he grew on me. The movie was more a reflection on the hole that religion fills down there than a musical cornucopia, and he was really good at talking about that; there was only just enough live music in fact to make you reflect that music is a more tasteful, subtle and hell I suppose artistic means of filling that hole.



Near the end there was an interview with old man Lee Sexton as he spoke of working in the mines and playing the banjo to lift his spirit, and you believed him, and he also spoke of all the good banjo players who had died, including (it sounded like) his own father and his own son. I thought, if this wants to be a Southern Musical Odyssey, it's got to have a lot more stuff like this.

I think a true Southern Musical Odyssey wd have to be a whole series - like the Civil War Mini Series. This format could never really capture it all, no more than Oh Brother Where Art Thou. Making Johnny Dowd and the Handsome Family follow them around through the south had the opposite effect of what they wanted. Not that there's a master in every county, but that there are these few cuty-pie weirdos lurking around the whole place. No matter how good they were. Funny - it was the same flaw in Oh Brother.
Made me reflect on just how good The Buena Vista Social Club really was - that movie could be called Shakespearean in its scope. Seems like a weird thing to say about a musical documentary about Cuba, but it really was a unified portrait of a whole society (it seemed) of musicians, from the kings and queens down to the fops and the grooms.

This one clearly was made with love and a lot of cranes. Maybe they would have driven further if they'd used a smaller camera.




Still, it was good. Kat liked it a lot. As a portrait of southern religion it was actually quite profound and chilling. A woman preaching in a diner about the murderer who could already feel his feet burning before he died; the chinless radio-preacher who had such uncanny power that she nearly had the audience in the rep cinema speaking in tongues; and the visions of people speaking in tongues themselves, something I've never heard before. The characters in this movie want to convince you about the reality of hellfire, and they have such authority in the matter that they very nearly do, certainly more than anything else I've seen...



Soundtrack was great though. No doubt about that.

Workin'

I'm trying to work on the play, instead of writing about writing the play in this space. But I promised scenes, so... at the risk of being dull, here's a bit from close to the start.

(They leap into their act – Henry playing the bones and Cole dancing. They sing in harmony.)

Both: Five can’t ketch me
And ten can’t hold me,
Ho,...
Round the corn, Sally!
Round the corn, round the corn,
Round the corn Sally!
Ho, ho, ho, round the corn Sally!

Here’s your iggle-quarter
And here’s your count-aquils,
Ho... (etc.)

I can bank, ‘ginny bank,
‘ginny bank the weaver,
Ho... (etc.)

Scene Two

(Later. Henry and Cole are trying to remove their make-up in the back of a moving coach. Cole gives up with the job only half-done.)

Henry: Get it all off. Will you?

Cole: What. It’s mostly off.

Henry: Get it all off.

Cole: Are we going to be in the presence of a lady? (He’s laughing.) Land sakes Henry. Wasn’t even worth putting on in the first place.

Henry: There was that kid.

Cole: He threw an egg!

Henry: Yeah and you caught it. We’re putting food on the table.

Cole: Optimist.

Henry: It gets me by.
...
Cole: I keep meaning to ask you Henry: What is this package you bear so delicately by your side?
(the banjo, wrapped)

Henry: I’ll show you.
(Cole tries to grab it.)
Not now, not now! I’m serious! Everything its own time. Could I just – ple

Cohen by Zoilus

Stolen Whole Hog

Leonard Cohen Has Gone Broke!

Leonard Cohen has gone broke!
I was reading the news and suddenly
everything had gone to shit and shame
and you said it was embezzlement
but embezzlement hits you on the head
hard so it was really fraud and shit
and shame and I was in such a hurry
to tell you but my telephone
was as off the hook as the tax lawyer
and suddenly I see a headline
LEONARD COHEN HAS GONE BROKE!
there is no shame in Hollywood
there is no shit on Mount Baldy
I have been to lots of monasteries
and taken many vows of poverty
but I never actually went broke
oh Leonard Cohen we love you get up

The Canadian government should establish a line item in the budget to give Leonard Cohen $10-million a year for the rest of his life just because. If that requires us to close down the Museum of Civilization or something, fine.

(Apologies to Frank O'Hara. Really sincere ones.)

Wrong-Eyed

Going to see this tonight at the Royal Rep Cinema. 9 p.m. show. See you there.

Beginnings

I remember about two months after I first started playing, I sat down with, Paul Miller, the first guy I'd ever seen play the banjo (at an orientation week presentation during my first week of theatre school, and the song he played was 'Way Downtown') and he told me to play something.

I played one of my rudimentary exercises and he made a sound of great satisfaction and said, "Ah; real music!"
I've always loved that idea of real music.

Hedy West

R. I. P.

Not the Poet Laureate of Australia Either

Well well well... They told me its popularity was growing by leaps and bounds down there in the States.

Cancelled!

The organizer didn't have us on her calendar! She denied everything until Caitriona played back her month-old message saved on her voice mail. The organizer said, "That *is* my voice," and then postulated, "Maybe you didn't call to confirm."

We think she's under 30, and has Alzheimers.
So there was no Old Folks Home show, with the proudly published set-list!
However, I did get a bright orange straw hat, cowboy-style, for the occasion.

2nd gig

I have a gig today with fiddler Caitriona at Sunnybrook, as part of their music therapy entertainment program, or something. It's outdoors, and an hour. The set list as follows (I'm self-consciously imitating music bloggers like my pal Zoilus here):

Merry Blacksmith/Banshee
Foolish You
Song Chris Coole taught me
Cindy
Mole in the Ground
(switch banjos)
You Are My Sunshine
Darlin Corey
(switch banjos, retune - fiddle solo)
Ship Inn Reel
Old Joe Clark
Wildwood Flower
Devil's Dream
Waterbound

And, if we have more time, perhaps there will be a little Lork Frankin and a little Peg of My Heart... Do you think that covers an hour?

I'm In the Movies

For months, Kat and I have had a cheap video of this song I do called WE'RE IN THE MOVIES. Locations include a dancing school, an elementary school gym and the former East Bloc. We're very proud of it. It features the long-neck banjo as well as James Thomson on stand-up bass. We've resolved to get it online sometime this summer, somehow, linked to the 'jar. Stay tuned.

What

I guess history can be pretty boring sometimes. Esp when I just regurgitate without even putting it in my own words. Sorry. Sometimes I need to use the 'jar as just a jar. I'm wondering whether I should be trying out dialogue for scenes here, ot whether that would be a mistake. Hmm. Hmmmmmm. Hmmmmmm.

William H. Robinson

This guy was a banjo player in his youth, but later became a preacher and got to speak of 'higher things' with his fellow travellers rather than being called upon to sing and play. One wonders if a beautiful voice was a prerequisite for preaching. And so whether Nathaniel Paul began his travels as a singing banjo player too. Not likely, but since playwriting is all about conflation...
From Log Cabin to the Pulpit,
or, Fifteen Years in Slavery:
At another time I went to a dance in the woods; the music consisted of tambourine, banjo and bones, but before the dance began they tied grapevines across the road, just high enough to catch a man riding horse back across the face or neck. When they heard the patrollers coming they ran, and the patrollers right after them; many of them were crippled, but not a slave was hurt or caught, So you see, there were some negro as well as Yankee tricks.

"The South and Its People"

by Wm Wells Brown, 1815-1884

THROUGHOUT the Southern States, there are still to be found remnants of the old time Africans, who were stolen from their native land and sold in the Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans markets, in defiance of all law. The last-named city, however, and its vicinity, had a larger portion of these people than any other section. New Orleans was their centre, and where their meetings were not uninteresting.

Congo Square takes its name, as is well known, from the Congo negroes who used to perform their dance on its sward every Sunday. They were a curious people, and brought over with them this remnant of their African jungles. In Louisiana there were six different tribes of negroes, named after the section of the country from which they came, and their representatives could be seen on the square, their teeth filed, and their cheeks still bearing tattoo marks. The majority of our city negroes came from the Kraels, a numerous tribe who dwell in stockades. We had here the Minahs, a proud, dignified, warlike race; the Congos, a treacherous, shrewd, relentless people; the Mandringas, a branch of the Congos; the Gangas, named after the river of that name, from which they had been taken; the Hiboas, called by the missionaries the "Owls," a sullen, intractable tribe, and the Foulas, the highest type of the African, with but few representatives here.

These were the people that one would meet on the square many years ago. It was a gala occasion, these Sundays in those years, and not less than two or three thousand people would congregate there to see the dusky dancers. A low fence enclosed the square, and on each street there was a little gate and turnstile. There were no trees then, and the ground was worn bare by the feet of the people. About three o'clock the negroes began to gather, each nation taking their places in different parts of the square. The Minahs would not dance near the Congos, nor the Mandringas near the Gangas. Presently the music would strike up, and the parties would prepare for the sport. Each set had its own orchestra. The instruments were a peculiar kind of banjo, made of a Louisiana gourd, several drums made of a gum stump dug out, with a sheepskin head, and beaten with the fingers, and two jaw-bones of a horse, which when shaken would rattle the loose teeth, keeping time with the drums. About eight negroes, four male and four female, would make a set, and generally they were but scantily clad.

It took some little time before the tapping of the drums would arouse the dull and sluggish dancers, but when the point of excitement came, nothing can faithfully portray the wild and frenzied motions they go through. Backward and forward, this way and that, now together and now apart every motion intended to convey the most sensual ideas. As the dance progressed, the drums were thrummed faster, the contortions became more grotesque, until sometimes, in frenzy, the women and men would fall fainting to the ground. All this was going on with a dense crowd looking on, and with a hot sun pouring its torrid rays on the infatuated actors of this curious ballet. After one set had become fatigued, they would drop out to be replaced by others, and then stroll off to the groups of some other tribe in a different portion of the square. Then it was that trouble would commence, and a regular set-to with short sticks followed, between the men, and broken heads ended the day's entertainment.

On the sidewalks, around the square, the old negresses, with their spruce-beer and peanuts, cocoa-nuts and pop-corn, did a thriving trade, and now and then, beneath petticoats, bottles of tafia, a kind of Louisiana rum, peeped out, of which the gendarmes were oblivious. When the sun went down, a stream of people poured out of the turn-stiles, and the gendarmes, walking through the square, would order the dispersion of the negroes, and by gun-fire, at nine o'clock, the place was well-nigh deserted. These dances were kept up until within the memory of men still living, and many who believe in them, and who would gladly revive them, may be found in every State in the Union.

I've never before read an account of the American South that differentiated between different African tribes. This guy also witnessed an event in a church at the moment of emancipation, when a gust of wind thrummed the strings of a banjo that was hanging on the wall, thrilling the congregation.

But I feel I'm veering somewhat away from my subject.