Back in the late Fifties there was an old gentleman named Percy White living in Seattle who played classical 5-string banjo. Interesting, I thought, but I never had a chance to hear him. A friend of mine who was just learning to play the 5-string went to see Mr. White one evening, and although he didn't learn much from him ("he hates folk banjo. He calls it [n-word]-picking."), he said it was a pretty interesting couple of hours in a bizarre sort of way. "Believe me," he told me, "you've never heard the William Tell Overture until you've heard it played on the 5-string banjo!"

Don Firth