(courtesy John Levin)
The banjo was an essential mode of entertainment in the latter 19th century, but often it was accompanied by other instruments, usually piano. There were, however, since the beginning of the 19th century performers who became famous for singing and playing the banjo. When it comes to recording, banjo and vocals are rather unusual to come by. It is a fascinating genre to examine.
From the very beginning of the 1890s, recording banjo and vocals wasn’t much of a priority, but there was one artist who specialized in this type of performance. Charles Asbury is one of the most underrated and interesting recording artists of the 1890s, and happened to be the second black recording star. Asbury made a career of singing and playing the banjo, and brought his Florida regional style with him. He brought all of this with him when he made recordings.
It is difficult to know exactly when he started making records, but by at least November of 1892 he was recognized enough in the phonograph world to be featured in the pioneering publication The Phonogram. Unfortunately when he was mentioned in the publication there wasn’t any in-depth description of him or his records. Asbury’s records are unusual in the world of acoustic recordings, as his may very well have been the first to feature banjo and vocals. Asbury was likely the first to make records of this kind.
Asbury’s records are incredible to listen to, they have an energy that no white performer at the time was able to imitate on records. He also presents a very accurate snapshot of what syncopated music sounded like before 1896. He would often play syncopation that wasn’t published in sheet music until the late 1890s. Many of his records still have yet to be discovered, but at least half a dozen of them are digitized for the public to hear.
Other than Asbury, there were very few other performers who took on vocals and banjo in commercial recording. Asbury had left recording by 1898. When going through digitized home recordings, there are quite a few recordings like this that will show up. It was a common genre to record at home, but not in the professional studios. Why is that? It is hard to know, but it might have something to do with the difficulty of balancing such a penetrative instrument with the voice. In order to record these two things effectively, the person must have a voice not only agreeable to the phonograph but strong enough to overpower the banjo. These are abilities that are difficult to marry.
The next performer to really own this genre was Len Spencer. Spencer was already known for singing “negro songs,” most often when he performed these, they included standard piano accompaniment. By 1897, he did a series of records with Vess Ossman playing the accompaniment on the banjo. There were 11 of these records he did in this series. In the early days, usually certain artists were given specific number blocks in catalogs, in the late 1890s, Spencer was given the numbers that started at 7200. For whatever reason, Columbia decided to do his vocal and banjo series all with the number 7200, but had an alphabetical suffix added to the end.
Some of the titles he did were more familiar ones, like “Mr. Johnson Turn me Loose,” but some were more obscure like “Crappy Dan.” Many of these have been digitized, and thankfully Spencer re-recorded many of these titles over and over. If you come across one of these records, there’s a good chance it won’t be the same as one of those that is digitized (this happened to me when I found two copies of different Spencer and Ossman records). While he did have this one short series, Spencer and Ossman did make some records for Columbia afterward.
In 1901, Spencer and Ossman made several more records for Victor. These records were also remade in the coming few years. Thankfully, he and Ossman recorded new titles for Victor, and oftentimes the quality of these records can be better than the Columbias. Even as late as 1904, he continued to make these records with Ossman. After 1900, Spencer didn’t do nearly as much singing as he had before, so hearing him perform any songs became quite unusual.
Later takes of Spencer’s original 7200 series were sometimes performed by Bob Roberts and Ossman. Spencer occasionally made records with another banjoist Parke Hunter. He made a few records with Hunter on more obscure labels like Leeds. Every once in a while vocal and banjo was recorded after Spencer stopped doing it, but it seemed to fall out of fashion for a little while. By the 1910s, vocal and banjo records usually included older songs; it seemed to be associated with an older style of performance. The famous black singer Carroll Clark recorded two sides with Ossman for Columbia in 1910, but other than that much of this seemed to fall out of favor for popular music. Those two sides of middle 19th century songs, one of them being the standard “Little old Log Cabin in the Lane.”
In the middle 1910s, Billy Golden recorded a series of sides with James Marlowe. Golden (born 1858) and Marlowe were both old veterans of minstrelsy; Marlowe was famous for also playing the banjo. His banjo playing however was distinctly different from that of Ossman and even Asbury. It was much more rudimentary, in the best possible way. His playing actually can be compared more to that of Uncle Dave Macon, who would soon make a big comeback on records for the exact same reason. Golden and Marlowe’s records usually had a formula, there would be a long sketch at the beginning, then at the end there would be a song where Marlowe played the banjo and they both sang. The banjo playing is sometimes the best part of these records.
By the early 1920s, there was a huge comeback of vocal and banjo records. This is also what brought on the many recordings of vocal and guitar (something that was recorded before the electric era, but not often). It is at this point that the blues guitar tradition was also finally being recorded. While there were older performers specializing in older songs like Uncle Dave Macon, there were also others like Papa Charlie Jackson who did some old songs, but also plenty of modern ones.
Vocal and string records from before the 1920s are relatively uncommon, so each one that is discovered is invaluable considering the difficulty it took to make them. They are not impossible to find, but they are rare.
R. S. Baker has appeared at several Ragtime festivals as a pianist and lecturer. Her particular interest lies in the brown wax cylinder era of the recording industry, and in the study of the earliest studio pianists, such as Fred Hylands, Frank P. Banta, and Frederick W. Hager.
