Chapter 14
Ten Banjo Players You Need to Hear
In This Chapter
Getting to know some path-breakers in the world of banjo
Exploring the music of the most influential banjo players to date
This chapter presents ten players (more if you care to count) who have made a difference in the world of the banjo. They’re not only the best at what they do, but they have also been among the most influential upon other banjo players. Some have expanded the musical potential of the banjo, while others are responsible for bringing new audiences to the instrument. I end this chapter with a list of other great players you should check out if you have the time.
Earl Scruggs (b. 1924)
You can’t possibly overstate Earl Scruggs’s influence on the world of the banjo. His three-finger technique is the most emulated banjo style in the world and is the important defining characteristic of bluegrass music (for more on bluegrass banjo, see Part II and Chapter 8). After raising the banjo within country music from a simple accompaniment instrument played by comedians to an instrument capable of the highest levels of virtuosity in the 1940s, Scruggs helped popularize the banjo and bluegrass music with a large national audience in the 1950s and ’60s through television appearances (The Beverly Hillbillies) and movie soundtracks (Earl’s unforgettable showpiece “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” was featured in Bonnie and Clyde).
Hundreds of thousands of banjo players cite him as a primary influence. Check out The Essential Earl Scruggs (Columbia) for a good overview of his music and career. Scruggs’s early 1960s instrumental masterpiece Foggy Mountain Banjo (Copper Creek Roots/Columbia) is the best bluegrass banjo instrumental album of all time.
Pete Seeger (b. 1919)
In the 1940s through the 1960s, Pete Seeger placed the banjo front and center in the American folk song revival as part of a long and prolific career as a singer, songwriter, author, and political and environmental activist. Pete’s 1948 book How To Play The Five-String Banjo was the first instructional book on American folk banjo styles. This book reveals his musical eclecticism, with chapters also devoted to blues and Spanish and South American music in addition to clawhammer, old-time, and bluegrass playing techniques. (For more specifics on banjo techniques, check out Parts II and III of this book.)
On the head of his trademark long-neck banjo is written “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender.” You may want to check out his CD Darling Corey and Goofing Off Suite (Smithsonian Folkways) for a taste of Seeger’s wide-ranging musical sensibility.
Béla Fleck (b. 1958)
Béla Fleck emerged from the progressive bluegrass scene in the 1980s to blaze trails and set new standards for the banjo within contemporary rock, jazz, classical, and world music. He’s the premiere banjo player in the world today, bringing a staggering technical ability and lyrical musicality to the music he creates with his band, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, and through collaborations with such diverse artists as Chick Corea, Zakir Hussein, Edgar Meyer, Tony Trischka, and others. I recommend listening to the bluegrass- oriented Tales from the Acoustic Planet (Warner Brothers), the classical recording Perpetual Motion (Columbia), and the Flecktones’s The Hidden Land (Columbia) to learn more about today’s most influential player.
Tommy Jarrell (1901–1985)
Some of the best traditional clawhammer banjo playing in the world originates from the Round Peak, North Carolina and Galax, Virginia areas. Although Tommy Jarrell is more celebrated as a fiddler, his drop-thumb clawhammer banjo playing, usually on a fretless banjo, has influenced many of today’s finest players, including Paul Brown, Bruce Molsky, Brad Leftwich, and Kirk Sutphin. Simultaneously intricate and hard driving, Jarrell’s music, along with other clawhammer players such as Wade Ward, Kyle Creed, Fred Cockerham and Matokie Slaughter, served as a bridge connecting the music’s late 19th century rural Southern roots to the modern old-time music revival. For more on Jarrell, check out The Legacy of Tommy Jarrell Volume 3: Come and Go With Me (County), a recording featuring Tommy’s solo clawhammer playing.
Bill Keith (b. 1939)
The banjo’s innovative Renaissance man, Bill Keith helped to develop the melodic style of banjo playing, enabling banjo players to play scales while still using familiar three-finger roll patterns. This widely adopted technique empowers the player to reproduce note-for-note versions of everything from a fiddle tune to a Bach invention and has significantly enhanced the banjo’s musical potential. (For more on the melodic style, see Chapter 8.)
Keith is also responsible for the Keith “D” tuner, which allows the player to quickly and accurately move from one pitch to another within a song. To dive in deeper to Keith’s music, you can explore Something Auld, Something New (Rounder) for Bill’s ingenious playing on bluegrass and jazz tunes.
Mike Seeger (b. 1933)
Mike Seeger (Pete’s half brother) has devoted his life to singing, playing, and documenting traditional music made by American southerners before the media age. With over 25 field recordings to his credit, Mike has helped to preserve the diversity of southern folk banjo styles while exposing historically important players such as Dock Boggs to a wider audience.
As a player, Mike uses old-time music as a wellspring for his own creative and personalized fusions, forming a model for contemporary artistic expression within this genre that has influenced hundreds of other old-time players. Southern Banjo Styles (Smithsonian) is essential listening if you want to get a feel for what Mike Seeger is all about.
Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952)
Nicknamed the “Dixie Dewdrop,” Dave Harrison Macon was the most popular banjo player in the first decades of commercial country music (from the 1920s to ’40s) and the early Grand Old Opry’s biggest star. With musical roots in 19th century minstrel, folk, and vaudeville music, Macon, whose folksy performing style earned him the nickname of “Uncle Dave,” brought a dizzying array of banjo playing techniques to the sound of early country music. His outrageous humor and showmanship often obscured his considerable banjo playing skills, which are on fine display on the recording Go Long Mule (County).
J. D. Crowe (b. 1937)
Considered the most influential banjo player of bluegrass music’s modern age (1970s to the present), J. D. Crowe brings a forceful right-hand attack and a bluesy intensity to his Scruggs-based bluegrass banjo playing. With crisp, aggressive pull-offs and ideas borrowed from early rock ’n’ roll and country guitar, Crowe is also a superb and influential band leader. The mid-1970s version of his band, The New South, featuring mandolin player Ricky Skaggs, guitarist Tony Rice, and dobro player Jerry Douglas, set the standard for the sound of modern bluegrass, absorbing contemporary country and folk influences. J.D. Crowe and the New South (Rounder) and The Bluegrass Album Band, Vol. 1 (Rounder) are essential discs for any banjo player’s music collection.
Don Reno (1927–1984)
Around the same time Earl Scruggs was learning to play in nearby North Carolina, Don Reno developed his three-finger approach to banjo playing in South Carolina. As his professional performing career blossomed in the 1950s and ’60s, Reno separated himself from Scruggs’s sound by bringing a new set of playing techniques to bluegrass banjo, adopted from his extensive knowledge of country guitar playing. From jazzy chordal licks to virtuosic single-string runs and an innovative right-hand technique, Reno’s playing offered an alternative to Scruggs’s approach within bluegrass and has inspired several successive generations of bluegrass banjo players. Reno’s Founding Father of the Bluegrass Banjo (CMH) is a compilation of some of his best late-career work. (See Chapter 8 for an introduction to Reno’s single-string playing technique.)
Sylvester (Vess) Ossman (1868–1923)
This classic banjo performer recorded almost a thousand cylinder and disc recordings at the dawn of the recording era, from 1893 to 1917, and was probably America’s most well-known banjo player at the beginning of the 20th century. Ossman had spectacular fingerpicking technique and a wonderful rhythmic feel to his playing. He was usually accompanied by piano, band, or orchestra. The immense popularity of ragtime in the early 1900s is reflected in Ossman’s repertoire, which included marches and popular music of the day as well as music composed for the banjo (see Chapter 7 to play two early 20th-century classic banjo pieces).
You can listen to some of Ossman’s recordings online by visiting the following Web sites:
Alison Brown (b. 1962)
Count this Nashville-based banjoist at the top of the list of today’s most influential progressive players. Combining influences from jazz, folk, Latin, bluegrass, Irish, and world music, Brown’s work on electric and acoustic banjo is lyrical, warm, and virtuosic — all at the same time (a rare accomplishment on this instrument)! She fronts the Alison Brown Quartet, a jazz-tinged ensemble featuring drums, piano, and bass, and she also heads up her own record label, Compass Records. Check out Stolen Moments (Compass) for the acoustic side of Brown’s playing and Out of the Blue (Compass) for a listening adventure in jazz fusion.
Tony Trischka (b. 1949)
Tony’s reputation as the first avant-garde bluegrass player was established in the 1970s through a series of groundbreaking recordings filled with startling original compositions. Luckily, the rest of the banjo world has finally caught up to him. Today, in addition to being at the forefront of the boldest of banjo explorations, Tony is known as a master of a wide variety of traditional banjo styles, including Scruggs-style bluegrass banjo. He’s a complete player who’s at home in any kind of music played on the banjo. Tony is also known an outstanding instructor who has influenced thousands of players through his books, DVDs, and private teaching. Count such players as Béla Fleck, Chris Pandolfi, and yours truly among his dedicated students. Check out Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular and World Turning (both on Rounder Records) for a sampling of music from this very influential player.
Other Banjo Players You Should Hear
If you want to go a little further in your exploration of the ever-expanding universe of banjo sounds and styles, I’ve provided the following lists of banjo players I think you need to check out:
Clawhammer and old time: Virgil Anderson, Danny Barnes, Riley Baugus, Mac Benford, Carroll Best, Dock Boggs, Laura Boosinger, Hank Bradley, Kate Brislin, Paul Brown, Samantha Bumgarner, Gaither Carleton, Bob Carlin, Maybelle Carter, Fred Cockerham, John Cohen, Cousin Emmy, Mary Z. Cox, Kyle Creed, Rufus Crisp, Dwight Diller, Cathy Fink, Dan Gellert, Alice Gerrard, Roscoe Holcomb, Mark Johnson, Grandpa Jones, Buell Kazee, Walt Koken, Jens Kruger, Lilly May Ledford, Frank Lee, Brad Leftwich, Dan Levenson, Bertram Levy, Charlie Lowe, R. D. Lunceford, Joel Mabus, Reed Martin, Michael Miles, Bruce Molsky, Lynn Morris, Molly O’Day, Tom Paley, Ken Perlman, Charlie Poole, Dirk Powell, Olla Belle Reed, Dink Roberts, Ivan Rosenberg, Mark Schatz, Lee Sexton, Morgan Sexton, Wayne Shrubsall, Matokie Slaughter, Will Slayden, Hobart Smith, Jody Stecher, Kirk Sutphin, Molly Tenenbaum, Suzanne Thomas, Odell Thompson, Leroy Troy, Stephen Wade, Abagail Washburn, Doc Watson, Oscar Wright
Bluegrass: Tom Adams, Eddie Adcock, Danny Barnes, Terry Baucom, Ron Block, Dennis Caplinger, Cia Cherryholmes, Pat Cloud, Noah Crase, Charlie Cushman, Doug Dillard, Steve Dilling, Joe Drumright, Ben Eldridge, Tony Ellis, Bill Emerson, Emily Erwin, Tony Furtado, John Hartford, Casey Henry, Murphy Henry, John Hickman, Steve Huber, Snuffy Jenkins, Courtney Johnson, Vic Jordan, Jens Kruger, John Lawless, Greg Liszt, “Little Roy” Lewis, Keith Little, Rudy Lyle, Ned Luberecki, Rob McCoury, John McEuen, Jim Mills, Lynn Morris, Alan Munde, Mike Munford, Alan O’Bryant, Sonny Osborne, Chris Pandolfi, Herb Pedersen, Noam Pilkelny, Don Wayne Reno, Butch Robins, Kristin Scott Benson, Sammy Shelor, Allen Shelton, Avram Siegel, Craig Smith, Fred Sokolow, Ralph Stanley, Ron Stewart, Don Stover, Dave Talbot, Bobby Thompson, Scott Vestal, Eric Weissburg, Pete Wernick