The Karen Linn book is excellent. Also check Toots of the Blues by Samuel Charters. He mentions the banjo forebear, a five string instrument called the "halam". It's interesting to note that a banjo type instrument is employed the the Griots of Senegal and other parts of Africa. The technique for playing them is a kind of "frailing" or down-picking.

The transfer from the plantation South to the Minstrel Show to the application in the Appalachians is covered well by Karen Linn's book.

Joel Sweeney's original five string banjo can be found in the Los Angeles County Museum. I think it's still there. However, there are pictures of the five strings that predate his supposed invention. He is reputed to have invented the fifth peg, however.

The tenor banjo used in jazz was fashioned when the violin players sought work in jazz bands. The tenor is tuned identically to the viola. The plcetrum style banjo retains the original tuning of the five-string without the fifth string or peg.

The North Carolina approach to banjo playing is exemplified by Snuffy Jenkins, a precursor to Scruggs and also by Obray Ramsay, an early eountry folk singer. Scruggs synthesized his style from earlier folk forms.

The earliest banjos were plantation built, light-weight and often strung with gut strings. The mountain banjos came in much later as gourd instruments and adapted to the changing technology in instrument making to become wire or steel strung with frets added.

The early banjos were without resonators. They were added later probably to enhance the recording or the jazz banjos in the twenties. The early gramophone recordings featured the banjo because it could cut through the primitive recording process. Later, when recording became more sophisticated, the guitar under such players as Eddy Lang changed the instrumentation and the banjo was replaced.

There are other examples of the five-string banjo tuned in the gCGBD tuning found in slaveic Russian guitar tunings and Hungarian as well.

Frank