Dear kind and patient readers: This entry of my column is a love letter of appreciation to all of YOU, a tidy number of whom have once again saved me from having to come up with a new topic about which to write. Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true: I’ve a list as long as my arm of stories, tributes, exposés and anecdotes waiting in the wings.
However, I celebrate my 41st entry by acknowledging all of you brave readers who wade through my ongoing observations, whether manic or maudlin, giddy or grumpy. After you’ve read what follows, at worst you might declare this preamble to be an apologia; at best you may accuse me of buttering you up so you’ll tolerate this month’s topic [N.B.: the modal verb “may” in the previous sentence can be viewed as either indicating the possibility of something OR as permission from me to you.]
In any event, I hope for and look forward to at least 41 additional essays (at least!) in the pursuit of the inspirational and the insane [N.B. II: to help facilitate this occurrence please inveigle our editor Andy Senior to continue this publication no matter what, send him an additional sum of your choice with your subscription renewal to help us get closer to the non-profit status toward which he and Joe are striving, or both; come to think of it, you can throw a few extra shekels in for me too: many thanks!].
My column on perfect pitch (Sept. 2024) elicited some (here, insert your choice of a word that means slightly less than hate) email—primarily for my including a hoary old joke about the banjo as well as revealing the definition of said to be a (regional) Japanese word for a WC—which I feel I must address. Hence, I concentrate here on the virtues of playing the banjo.
First, despite the grumbling of modern (Bop and beyond) jazz musicians and their hangers-on, when in the right hands, the banjo can be a beautiful instrument. Its history is too involved to include in the limited space I’m allowed (and has most likely been thoroughly covered within/on these pages/screens) so I’ll simply begin by stating you can’t be unhappy while playing a banjo! If you see anyone scowling at you while strumming on their tenor or plectrum, they either have gas or they also play additional instruments, so are not pure banjoists, exclusively thwacking away on an instrument that grew in popularity for the general consumer as a result of the development of the recording industry—let’s say 1900 or so with the recordings of Vess L. Ossman—and all but disappeared by the early 1930s (unless you were listening to Gene Kardo’s Orchestra) due to improved recording methods that allowed the guitar to be heard.
After its heyday, the banjo was eventually relegated to the striped-vested, styrofoam-hatted, handlebar-mustachioed coterie of mirth-makers that held (and still hold) sway in pizza parlors and banjo societies worldwide, not to mention The Mummers. These groups weren’t exclusively conclaves of clanging chordists; one need only mention the Long Island Banjo Society that launched the careers of (in alphabetical order) Howard Alden, Bob Barta, Cynthia Sayer, and Frank Vignola, among others.
Interestingly, if one googles Mssrs. Alden and Vignola, the banjo is downplayed (they’re now generally thought of as guitarists, dahling, although both still banjoate with pleasure), but the LIBS is where they first plunked out “Bye Bye Blues,” “The World is Waiting For the Sunrise,” and Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5. The latter is TRUE: your best wielders of the banjo can play it all, from Brahms to Rachmaninov to Dylan to “Arkansas Traveler,” and everything in-between!
Moreover, the banjo seems to be an instrument of longevity. All of the diet fads you buy into and big pharma meds your GP’s are thrust at you aside, if you want to virtually guarantee an impressive life span, pick up the banjo! You don’t believe me? Supporting my proposal is New Orleans banjo player Narvin Kimball, who made it to 97 years and played with everyone who ever aspired to greatness in OKOM. But he’s not the only one. Let’s head north from NOLA to St. Louis. There were many octogenarians playing hot banjo in that city steeped in jazz history. From John Becker (with Jeannie Kittrell’s St. Louis Rivermen; left us at age 90) to Al Stricker (banjoist /vocalist /raconteur /founding member of the legendary St. Louis Ragtimers; passed at age 87) to Bobby Grimm (with the St. Louis Stompers; still going strong at age 83).
Closer to home for me, there’s a regular (NOT-Mummer’s) parade of stringed sisyphi throughout New England’s history. In order of longevity, banjo players I’ve played with who beat the national lifespan average include: Peter Bullis (banjoist/manager for the New Black Eagle Jazz Band; passed at 86); Joel Schiavone (whose story has been covered over previous editions of this august publication; left us at 87); Art Doran (my longtime partner at the Seamen’s Inne in Mystic; still plunking at 93); Charlie Salerno (banjoist/band leader who was the stuff of legend in New Haven County when I was a kid; still strumming at 95); Earl Capron (leader of the Bourbon Street Seven; passed away in 2006 a week short of his 98th birthday); and Dan Vece (played until he was 100 years old; shed this mortal coil in 1997 at age 101).
Always interested in the “why” of things, I started asking around for opinions as to what helps banjo players live so long. My friend Dave Mechler (cornetist with Earl Capron’s band) had the best observation: “It could just be that banjo players’ longevity has more to do with the company they keep, and we all know that banjo players always have many, many friends…(I think a banjo player I knew once told me that).”
Let’s switch to the guitar, which is for some a more versatile and musically deep instrument. Prejudices momentarily shelved, you might be giving up a lot to concentrate on that instrument. Just ask—if you could—Charlie Christian (age 25), Robert Johnson (27), Eddie Lang (31), Jimmie Rodgers (35), Django Reinhardt (43), or Wes Montgomery (45) if they’d’ve switched to the banjo in order to gain another 40-50 years. MY guess would be they’d all say NO, (perhaps excepting Eddie Lang, who gave up the violin to play banjo in society orchestras from 1920 to roughly 1923 before becoming jazz’s first prominent soloist on the guitar).
Of course there are some exceptions to my proposition. On the banjo side of things, we lost Vess Ossman at age 55 and Eddie Peabody was only 71 when he succumbed. Guitarists B.B. King made it to 89, while Buddy Guy continues playing at age 88 and Kenny Burrell is still with us at 93! Finally, a true gentleman of jazz guitar, Bucky Pizzarelli (94) would very likely still be mesmerizing audiences worldwide if it hadn’t been for COVID.
But overall, if we were to add the ages of everyone in the pop world (keeping in mind that ragtime, classic jazz and swing were the pop styles of their day) who played banjo or guitar and take the average lifespan of those two camps, you’d find banjo players coming out on top.
Admittedly, there may be additional factors to consider. Most of the nonagenarian banjo players (and the one centenarian…so far) I listed above play(ed) for fun; they gig(ged) in-between bouts with their “day job.” So there was much less pressure, either musically, or in terms of “making it.” They were just playing for the joy of it and taking their audiences with them on their exuberant ride. In all fairness, the guitarists I listed who died before their time were full-time musos.
It may come down to karma. Banjo players inevitably put smiles on people’s faces, whether due to the gregariousness of themselves or their instrument (if I may be permitted a brief anthropomorphic fancy), the largely spirited tunes in their repertoire, or their often unpretentious attitudes; people just seem to have a good time when someone’s playing the banjo.
Béla Fleck and Cynthia Sayer among others have pushed the musical boundaries of the banjo, but whenever you encounter them, they’re still having fun! This is not to say that guitarists don’t have fun; they might just be concentrating a bit more on chord extensions and intricate runs (not outside the wheelhouse, however, of Fleck, Sayer, or some others) so the guitarists sometimes might not have the spare focus to “make a show of it.” This is of little import, as average audiences are more likely than not to attend a performance featuring guitar for disparate reasons than those looking to hear some banjo.
The questions we’re left with are: Is the banjo less “serious” than the guitar? Is there some sort of alternate “crossroads” where the devil will allow you more corporeal time if you grab an instrument the cognoscenti deem one of torture? Could I have found a less oddball topic for this month’s column? I’ll leave you to ponder these conundrums: Me? I’m going to start practicing the banjo!
