Banjo players and chicks.

[Carl Anderton]

http://books.google.com/books?id=vpE5AAAAMAAJ&dq=billy%20arling...

This is an interesting article because it talks candidly about banjo players and their lifestyle in the early minstrel period.  Inquiring minds want to know!

The Victorian era being quite prudish on this topic makes this article all the more interesting.

[Bell Banjos]

Hide the women!!  This is great, Carl.

[Nicholas A Bechtel]

Rock Stars..or the equivalent there of.  

[Paul Draper]

My banjo playing seems to have the opposite effect...

[Carl Anderton]

That's because you're stuck in the wrong era, Paul.  It's not your fault.  For some reason chicks dug banjo players in the 19th century!

[Paul Draper]

Maybe because they were more raffinées ?

[Rob Morrison]

Carl--

 

I was immediately drawn to this histerical drawing because I actually had this exact same experience on Saturday November 7, 1992 at the Saluda South Carolina Civic Center in the Saluda Theater as a member of the Crescent Moon Rounders Stringband. The only major difference was that I wasn't in blackface. 

Saluda had monthly featured attractions at their civic center.  People dressed up in their finest to come to these shows.  Our band's fiddler was a hometown favorite, Reid Ringer, the state fiddling champion at that time and quite a virtuoso.  We had several other fine singers and musicians and I was, of course, the funny guy who played the banjo.  Well, we gave them their money's worth and then some.  We were in the middle of a standing ovation when suddenly an imposing looking woman in a fancy dress ran right up on the stage and introduced herself to me by throwing her arms around me and planting a great big old kiss. And I mean she didn't miss, either. I immediately introduced her to my wife who was sitting in the first row and things wound down from there.  But it is just amazing how events tend to repeat themselves in such incredible detail.--Rob Morrison