Old Time Banjo at Chapel Hill, NC- 1895

[Joel Hooks]

I posted this on the BHO where I thought it would get more interest than it did.  Many of the "pioneers" of banjo playing were from the state of NC.  Chapel Hill continues to be a center of "old time" music.

Here is a bit of fun for you old-time purists, documented evidence of a banjo tune being played in North Carolina, 1895.  June 6, 1895 to be exact.

https://archive.org/details/centennialcommen1895univ

It is hard to make out the other instrumental, but one is "British Patrol" by Asch, arranged by Ruby Brooks and Harry Denton.  I don't have that arrangement but I did find a copy for banjo in "White's Solo Banjoist," 1886.

http://contentdm6.hamilton.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/spe-ba...

Played on gut strings, this will really give you that genuine North Carolina old-time banjo sound!

Comments?

[Strumelia]

Are you making a joke, Joel?  Sometimes it's hard to tell, or maybe I'm just dense.  In any case, it's a very dry College book of university men's standard notation music club/orchestra tunes, predominantly Irish tunes it seems?  I don't see where it has much to do with old-time music, purists, or the unpure.  Or even with banjos, if you ask me.   'Mother Goose Medley'...well have fun with that.    =8-\     Do you feel this book represents a repertoire and techniques that the common working class person was typically playing in North Carolina at the time?

[Joel Hooks]

Hi lisa, my point is exactly that this has nothing to do with "old time" music.  The program for the banjo club at the University of NC shows them playing a banjo arrangement of a popular march by a even more popular banjoist Ruby Brooks.

The notation example is just informative as to the music that was being played.  It was typical banjo music for the time-- the kind that spurred hundreds of books and thousands of pieces of sheet music being printed and sold all over the US (and Europe, Australia, etc.).

Yes, this book (as well as the seemingly endless numbers of others) does represent what the common folks were playing during the "popular era" of the banjo-- 1880s-19teens.  It was the reason that folks wanted banjos.  

This banjo club program is just another piece of documentation putting popular music in North Carolina, the home state of Earl Scruggs (yes, the other side of the state, but not that isolated), Charlie Poole etc., in the 19th century.

To put this in perspective… In 1895 these kids would have been in their late teens early 20s.  They were the cool kids playing the cool music.  In the 1950s they would have been in their 50s, unlikely that they were still playing banjo, but you never know.

Here is recording from Harry C. Browne playing another piece the Banjo club performed, "Push Dem Clouds Away."

http://youtu.be/zN2kiQ1Hp-U

[Strumelia]

I do hear your point Joel.  But then I think of myself in high school right here in my rural hokey home town, playing the 'cello in our high school orchestra, giving our little concerts.  We were reading from modern sheet music that was mass-published for schools (and still is today) and ordered by our orchestra teacher from the big music publishing companies so we all had scores for our different instruments.  Every year she ordered some 'new' stuff for us to play. What were we playing?   Pop themes from vaguely current movies like Star Wars, Dr. Zhivago, West Side Story.  Bela Bartok, Antonio Corelli, Copland, and Brahms.  Scott Joplin for dummies.  'Inspirational' songs, pop medleys.  Some stale things for the grandfolks like Bicycle Built for Two or Alice Blue Gown. 

We kids did not consider any of what we were playing from sheet music in school to be 'the cool music'.  After school I listened to Jethro Tull and Frank Zappa instead.  Just because we were sitting in school dutifully playing from that sheet music and putting on our little concerts for the parents, doesn't mean that 'common folks' were playing those musical pieces in their everyday lives either.  My friends were mostly improvising on their guitars, drums, and flutes at home.  Garage bands, playing by ear.  The stuff they wanted to play, like Jethro Tull, The Doors, or Frank Zappa...was not on sheet music. 

Maybe it's a small point, but I think it'd be odd to judge the commoner's music of the time based on school orchestra/club sheet music scores and books.  Or on commercial sheet music in general.  Of course these days people don't play as much music in general as they did a hundred years ago- nowadays they do more passive listening to commercial recordings by professional musicians, and fewer people actually play instruments or sing themselves in daily life.  Sad, but hopefully changing.

[Joel Hooks]

This is not the same thing as school orchestra, in fact most schools wanted nothing to do with banjo clubs.

Ruby Brooks, Harry Denton, Fred Van Eps and Vess Ossman were the Jethro Tull and Frank Zappa of the 1890s.  It is hard for us to understand esp. because of the suits they wore compared to the fashions since the 1960s.

Evening dress was the torn jeans and leather jackets of the 1890s.

Here is Brooks and Denton,

They were hot recording artists and pure cool.  They were in big demand. 

For many years people have been told that there was a "classical" banjo era-- that did not happen. In fact, Brooks tried to play Classical music on the banjo and it did not do well-- because it was boring (Alfred Farland was another that tried the so called classical banjo with various amounts of success, but it did not catch on).  Brooks really hit in the 1890s as a recording artist for Edison.  He was playing popular music that the kids loved and parents… not so much.  A couple of years after this program, ragtime hit and really miffed off parents.

A different era with different fashions.  We played Nirvana and Metallica on our electric guitars and thought the Beatles and Zappa were lame.

[John Cohen]

Thanks for posting, Joel. Good stuff!