John Picayune Butler - Minstrel Banjo2024-03-29T08:55:07Zhttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/forum/topics/john-picayune-butler?x=1&id=2477478%3ATopic%3A95164&feed=yes&xn_auth=noPractical question gets posed…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-08-31:2477478:Comment:990822013-08-31T17:09:51.470ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>Practical question gets posed. How many of the tunes attributed in the minstrel song books and tutors are tunes at least mythically attributed to the Black picayune butler who may have entertained from New Orleans to Ohio in the 1820s and 1830s or may be a legend conjured up by minstrel entertainers like Jim Crow, and how many particularly in the later tutors like Buckley's and Converses are tunes that really come from John B Butler who performed as the Original Picayune Butler in NYC…</p>
<p>Practical question gets posed. How many of the tunes attributed in the minstrel song books and tutors are tunes at least mythically attributed to the Black picayune butler who may have entertained from New Orleans to Ohio in the 1820s and 1830s or may be a legend conjured up by minstrel entertainers like Jim Crow, and how many particularly in the later tutors like Buckley's and Converses are tunes that really come from John B Butler who performed as the Original Picayune Butler in NYC from 1857 at least (when he first appears in the clipper and the city directory) and his death in 1864? Since there were several others performing as Pic Butler even in NYC in the 50s, might some of these tunes be from them. Is there a way to tell?\</p>
<p> </p> Been doing a lot of looking i…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-23:2477478:Comment:965692013-07-23T21:47:45.688ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>Been doing a lot of looking in 19th century Newspaper archives, gathering articles, rather than going through them largely. One thing seems to be that at least in the 1848 and 1852 national campaigns and some local or state campaigns in New York state in particular the song "Picayune Butler" may have been identified with the Democratic Party and may have even been the D part campaign song in 1852.</p>
<p>This contrasts with the 1864 presidential campaign where some Democrats tried to make…</p>
<p>Been doing a lot of looking in 19th century Newspaper archives, gathering articles, rather than going through them largely. One thing seems to be that at least in the 1848 and 1852 national campaigns and some local or state campaigns in New York state in particular the song "Picayune Butler" may have been identified with the Democratic Party and may have even been the D part campaign song in 1852.</p>
<p>This contrasts with the 1864 presidential campaign where some Democrats tried to make much of Lincoln's affection for the song</p>
<p> </p> What I find interesting is ac…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-17:2477478:Comment:960852013-07-17T12:26:47.508ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>What I find interesting is actually the holes in what we used to think as good history and research on one side, and the opportunities for such research today afforded by the internet and some of the databases. I began doing this expecting information I had long depended on from sources like Cece Conway's book to be accurate. I could just crib that together do my footnotes right and be on with it. But a critical search shows that what we thought was solid fact was wrong, misleading, and…</p>
<p>What I find interesting is actually the holes in what we used to think as good history and research on one side, and the opportunities for such research today afforded by the internet and some of the databases. I began doing this expecting information I had long depended on from sources like Cece Conway's book to be accurate. I could just crib that together do my footnotes right and be on with it. But a critical search shows that what we thought was solid fact was wrong, misleading, and didn't make sense if you examine the facts, Got a bunch of hard work in libraries to do.</p>
<p> </p> Tony, I have to say this is a…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-17:2477478:Comment:959342013-07-17T02:40:20.725ZScott Johnsonhttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/ScottJohnson
<p>Tony, I have to say this is a fascinating thread. I'm a bit of a history buff, and while I don't have any great new information for you, it always interests me. </p>
<p>It is always fun to find out that something we think that we don't know a lot about, when we start digging into it, there is a lot of information out there. On the other hand, some times when we look at things we think we know a lot about, we find that there is little actual information out there. Sometimes frustrating,…</p>
<p>Tony, I have to say this is a fascinating thread. I'm a bit of a history buff, and while I don't have any great new information for you, it always interests me. </p>
<p>It is always fun to find out that something we think that we don't know a lot about, when we start digging into it, there is a lot of information out there. On the other hand, some times when we look at things we think we know a lot about, we find that there is little actual information out there. Sometimes frustrating, but interesting none the less.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your research.</p> Apart from the issues about t…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-17:2477478:Comment:960002013-07-17T01:29:43.222ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>Apart from the issues about the later-day white minstrel Butlers. I am a bit concerned about the thinness of evidence about Butler in New Orleans. </p>
<p>T A Brown wrote a series on the history of minstrelsy in the Clipper in 1860 that contains a paragraph about George Nichols and Picayune Butler. He seems to have reprinted that article or series under a number of different titles including in the 1874 book up to the early 20th Century. Almost every other source that speaks about…</p>
<p>Apart from the issues about the later-day white minstrel Butlers. I am a bit concerned about the thinness of evidence about Butler in New Orleans. </p>
<p>T A Brown wrote a series on the history of minstrelsy in the Clipper in 1860 that contains a paragraph about George Nichols and Picayune Butler. He seems to have reprinted that article or series under a number of different titles including in the 1874 book up to the early 20th Century. Almost every other source that speaks about this that I have found from the late 19th Century on repeats this or uses this as its only source. I thought that Nichols had left a memoir that was the basis for this, but that does not seem to be. </p>
<p>The next issue would be to investigate the connection between Rice and Butler, after all it is Rice that actually leaves us the song about Butler. Some of the claims about Jim Crow that focus on Nichols give the impression that Rice's success with Jim Crow was when Rice began singing and performing the song, but Rice began beforing the song in 1829 BEFORE Nichols says he began performing the song and did perform the song based on show announcements in New Orleans I have found for Nichols.</p>
<p>Note Rice was performing in the same circuses and shows that Nichols was performing in both in New Orleans and in Cincinnati and Louisville.</p>
<p>I have yet to find any information that clearly speaks of a Picayune Butler performing in New Orleans that isn't some derivative of the T. A Brown reports via Nichols, same post civil war memoirs. There is a faint mention in a review of a performance in New Orleans that refers to a banjoist referred to as "old Butler" but there is nothing other than a backward reference by Kmen that identifies that this is Picayune Butler or anyone really.</p>
<p>The other thing that becomes true if you breeze through references in minstrel performance bills and newspaper accounts from the 1840s through the 1860s is that once the song Picayune Butler came out, it was a tremendous national success, one of the biggest hits of the minstrel stage and probably entering areas of popular music beyond minstrelsy. The song and the ideas about it were so popular that writers about politics, local, national, and even international, or about many other subjects might refer to the song in some way in regular newspapers across the US and even foreign correspondents, expecting newspaper readers to know the song and what it signified. So that the idea of Picayune Butler, and the image embodied in the song was part of mass popular culture in the United States, if not beyond, from the mid 1840s through the civil war.</p>
<p>In other words in upstate New York, or Charleston South Carolina, or a foreign correspondent writing from Italy in the 1850s and Democratic party supporters of McClellan trying to make Lincoln look bad for fighting for freedom in 1864 would expect any reader of their newspaper to know what they were talking about when they referred to Picayune Butler, the song. they wouldn't have to explain it.</p>
<p>Curiously, o perhaps not so curiously, there is no connection in any of this writing about an actual Picayune Butler a Black banjoist in New Orleans or elsewhere, except in the song as performed or known. A variety of claims about him crop up in a variety of stories about how General Benjamin Butler the occupier of New Orleans acquired the nickname Picayune, although some evidence might suggest he acquired it before he arrived in New Orleans and these are made to match</p>
<p>It Is only AFTER the Civil War in "memoirs" like the one from Cincinatti we have reproduced here and in an identical one I found in an 1870 Memphis paper</p>
<p>I should say I have spent a lot of time over the years looking at 19th century popular literature and "journalism." Writers were pretty free to write whatever they thought would sound good, writers didn't have to provide any proof for what they wrote, and writers were often encouraged to make up something interesting.</p>
<p>The question occurs how much are these "memoirs" some 30 or 40 years after the fact, creations of the cultural image created by the song and its popularity and the performers emulating the character in the song.</p>
<p>How much are we dealing with a powerful cultural image created by the song and the minstrel entertainers who gave it mass popularity and how much have we ever been dealing with a real New Orleans banjoist?</p>
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<p> </p> Anyone know how to contact D…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-16:2477478:Comment:960722013-07-16T15:27:31.789ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>Anyone know how to contact Dan Wykes? If he isn't on this list can someone have him email me about this stuff at <a href="mailto:blackbanjotony@hotmail.com">blackbanjotony@hotmail.com</a>. He had a very relevant post a aboutbout all of this in the authentic campaigner about 5 years ago</p>
<p>Anyone know how to contact Dan Wykes? If he isn't on this list can someone have him email me about this stuff at <a href="mailto:blackbanjotony@hotmail.com">blackbanjotony@hotmail.com</a>. He had a very relevant post a aboutbout all of this in the authentic campaigner about 5 years ago</p> Further on in the same instal…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-15:2477478:Comment:959142013-07-15T22:04:15.969ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>Further on in the same installment Converse Wichelll's remembrances of the 1847 Evans' Minstrels. When Winchell lists the cast of the company and gets to Juba, Winchell and Converse after him note he is Black like this "jack Huntley, Frank Moran, Bill Elliot, Juba (colored). . . In the next sentence Winchell liss banjoists he believes Gus Mead could have beat "Briggs, Rumsey, Pic Butler or any of them" he makes no such notation about this Pic Butler.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Further on in the same installment Converse Wichelll's remembrances of the 1847 Evans' Minstrels. When Winchell lists the cast of the company and gets to Juba, Winchell and Converse after him note he is Black like this "jack Huntley, Frank Moran, Bill Elliot, Juba (colored). . . In the next sentence Winchell liss banjoists he believes Gus Mead could have beat "Briggs, Rumsey, Pic Butler or any of them" he makes no such notation about this Pic Butler.</p>
<p> </p> Just another note from Conver…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-15:2477478:Comment:961382013-07-15T21:39:57.865ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>Just another note from Converse. In Installment 5 of Banjo Reminiscences, an article in which the first sentence mentions the Morrell 1857 contest, Converses says he knows of only one contest "wherein the color drive was not drawn" and this a contest in Kansas City in 1884 involving Pittsburgh based banjo entertainer and banjo maker C. P, Stinson whom he says was the first to use "themandolin pick.". Obviously, the Pic Butler he describes in the 1857 was not Black</p>
<p>Just another note from Converse. In Installment 5 of Banjo Reminiscences, an article in which the first sentence mentions the Morrell 1857 contest, Converses says he knows of only one contest "wherein the color drive was not drawn" and this a contest in Kansas City in 1884 involving Pittsburgh based banjo entertainer and banjo maker C. P, Stinson whom he says was the first to use "themandolin pick.". Obviously, the Pic Butler he describes in the 1857 was not Black</p> Hi Tony, I'm glad that you fo…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-11:2477478:Comment:958682013-07-11T00:09:08.008ZBob Sayershttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/BobSayers
<p>Hi Tony, I'm glad that you found something of use. I'm still downloading newspaper files in three areas: (1) any references to banjo music (especially African American banjo playing) before 1840; (2) references to banjoists on the cusp of minstrelsy, circa 1837-1842; and (3) store ads for sellers of banjos from about 1840-1860. Most of what I've found so far is pretty mundane stuff, although taken together paints a pretty interesting picture of the early banjo playing community. But…</p>
<p>Hi Tony, I'm glad that you found something of use. I'm still downloading newspaper files in three areas: (1) any references to banjo music (especially African American banjo playing) before 1840; (2) references to banjoists on the cusp of minstrelsy, circa 1837-1842; and (3) store ads for sellers of banjos from about 1840-1860. Most of what I've found so far is pretty mundane stuff, although taken together paints a pretty interesting picture of the early banjo playing community. But there have been some real nuggets, some of which I'll try to post over time. I'm including two here.</p>
<p>So far I've unearthed three different "runaway banjoist" ads. The one that I've posted here about a fugitive slave in Maryland in 1790 gave me the chills when I got to the name. It may be too early for our guy, but then who knows?</p>
<p>The second one is about a stupid politician (possibly Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke) who mistook a band of passing musicians in Washington for insurrectionists. I laughed when I read it. </p>
<p>Anyway, I hope you find these of interest.</p>
<p><a href="http://undefined" target="_blank"><img src="undefined" class="align-full"/></a><br/> <br/> <cite>Tony Thomas said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/forum/topics/john-picayune-butler?commentId=2477478%3AComment%3A95860&xg_source=activity#2477478Comment95860"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>Dear Bob: </p>
<p>Great work as in your original post on this issue. I meant to go through a couple newspaper sites today too I found a couple things last night. I tis really important to post stuff here or somewhere, because the whole problem of all of this is that we have enthusiasts like us who know this that and the other thing, but none of it gets formally recorded or shared. Thus it never makes it way out into publications ad becomes part of the common pool of knowledge, and cannot be shared proudly with everyone interested, not just in playing but understanding the history.</p>
<p>The capacity we now have just with the stuff available on the Internet generally, let alone some of the academic databases some of us have access too, makes it quite possible for us to find things it would have taken people a lot of work to find 20 years ago. </p>
<p> If you can send me or post any of the materials about the Black banjoists you found, it would be very very useful. I will get Campenella's book. I have downloaded Glenroy and much other stuff from the circus web site which is extremely rich in material both on direct links to banjo playing and minstrelsy and to the context of popular entertainment in the last century. Most of those who later became the first generation offering minstrel packages were circus entertainers like Sweeney and Emmet and even after "the institution" began, many went back and forth.</p>
<p>Yes, I do not know as much about this period as you all do, but I do know that Black stage entertainers of any kind outside of a few segregated attempts by Blacks to perform for other blacks in NYC and Philadelphia were quite rare until AFTER the Civil War and were unknown in either circuses of the popular theaters where minstrels performed.</p>
<p>Sweeney seems to be the first major popular entertainment white or other banjoist that we know about and seems to have made a splash, I think the way that Sweeney made a splash that started some continuity is probably what crystallized the idea. But I have no doubt there were other banjo entertainers before him, </p>
<p>whatever documentation you can for them PLEASE POST THEM HERE OR SOMEWHERE LIKE THIS. </p>
<p>The more people know about thi, the more minds working o it, the more ideas and the more we will know.</p>
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<p>Again, I can understand the folks who are just concerned with playing tunes, and dont want to be bothered with other stuff and I do not believe in trying to tell people what they should thnk is important</p>
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</blockquote> When I wrote this I hadnt re…tag:minstrelbanjo.ning.com,2013-07-09:2477478:Comment:956232013-07-09T19:46:43.389ZTony Thomashttp://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/profile/TonyThomas
<p>When I wrote this I hadnt really looked at the sources. We don't have any sure recollections of Butler performing on the stage in New Orleans, although the more I look there are more and more references to him as a street player and someone that entertainers like Nichols learned from and someone who was known to perform for Blacks and others,</p>
<p>Apart from Nichols and one reference to "old Butler" and perhaps Brown's memoir, what we have is a lot of memoir from long long after the fact…</p>
<p>When I wrote this I hadnt really looked at the sources. We don't have any sure recollections of Butler performing on the stage in New Orleans, although the more I look there are more and more references to him as a street player and someone that entertainers like Nichols learned from and someone who was known to perform for Blacks and others,</p>
<p>Apart from Nichols and one reference to "old Butler" and perhaps Brown's memoir, what we have is a lot of memoir from long long after the fact from the civil war period and even the late 19th century. We have to untangle how much that stuff is false memories that are fueled by the legend of the Picayune Butler that grew up around the song and the minstrel impersonators of Butler, and how much of it is accurate truth. </p>
<p>My strong suspicion is that it is qutie possible that much of the memories in New Orleans of Old Corn Meal, a far more documented Black banjo entertainer who may have actually performed on the stage gets mixed up in retrospect as memory of Picayune Butler decades after he has become a trademark symbol and legend for a Black banjo player, popularly reproduced by white minstrel entertainers takng up his name, and by a host of other musical products like the "Picayune Butler Songster" sold in a Baltimore bookstore in 1845.<br/> <br/> <cite>Tony Thomas said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/forum/topics/john-picayune-butler?id=2477478%3ATopic%3A95164&page=3#2477478Comment95307"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>The New Orleans stuff is actually fairly well done. We have not only memoirs of him playing in New Orleans after the fact as several people here have located and posted but Newspaper articles from New Orleans in the 1830s reporting on stage appearances by Picayune Butler that Shlomo found in 2009. I haven't looked much about that yet really,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>New Orleans does have lost of records. Lowell was able to find birth and even death records for Ferguson the banjoist who taught Emmett there. Even records of enslaved Black people in Louisiana are quite extensive and have been an important foundation for much work we do about Slavery.</p>
<p>However, I would think finding Butler this way would probably not be very probable. All reports indicate Picayune Butler was not born in Louisiana but in either Martinique or Guadaloupe. It would be quite surprising if Butler were his real family name s opposed to a stage name, since that is hardly a Martinican name. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>There isn't much real mystery about the New Orleans musician, what needed cleaning up or exploration is the 20th and 21st Century mistake banjo historians and enthusiasts made of conflating the early Butler with later banjo entertainers inhabiting the character. That such a character grew up by the 1840s and had such popularity and later that this name got attached to a significant Union general and that Lincoln's affection for the Pic Butler song became an issue in the 1864 election is also part of the storytoo</p>
<p><br/> <br/> <cite>OK-4 said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/forum/topics/john-picayune-butler?id=2477478%3ATopic%3A95164&page=3#2477478Comment95296"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p>You might consult a genealogist, since they have experience tracking down records of ordinary folks (the first thing they will tell you is to look at census records, but they may have other ideas). There are various historical societies in Louisiana that might have friendly archivists. There may be records of Mr. Butler in French, not just English.</p>
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