Origins: Baptist Shout / Babtist Shout

Subject: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: cnd
Date: 21 Apr 21 - 03:19 PM

There's a song called Baptist Shout by North Carolinian Fred Jenkins played in an early 3-finger (not Scruggs) style of banjo. Here's all I know about it, via The North Carolina Banjo Collection, Rounder Records CD 0439, 0440 (1998):

5. Babtist Shout - Recorded in Richmond, IN, ca. 1927. Original issue: Gennett 6187-B.

J. FRANCIS "FRANK" JENKINS (8/27/1888-4/9/1945) was most famous as a member of DaCosta Woltz's Southern Broadcasters, at whose recording session this solo piece was rendered. A resident of Dobson in Surry County, his father, J. Francis Sr., known as "Old Frank" (ca.1849-1935), played banjo in the downpicking style. Although primarily a sawmill man and tobacco farmer, Jenkins always followed music semi-professionally, performing with medicine-type shows, on the radio and recordings with groups such as the Pilot Mountaineers (his son Oscar and Ernest Stoneman), and at local fiddler's conventions in his three-finger style.

"Babtist Shout" is a version of "Spanish Fandango" and descended from the guitar piece with that same title, played in an open tuning analogous to G tuning on the banjo. The piece appears under many names in the rural banjo repertoire--"Babtist Shout" is just one variation (see cut 6).

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My main question is: does anyone know any of the other names this song has appeared under?

As a note, the song appears to be primarily titled "Babtist Shout" rather than Baptist, but the implication seems to be Baptist.

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: cnd
Date: 21 Apr 21 - 03:21 PM

To complete the liner notes I left hanging, cut 6 is "American And Spanish Fandango - Smith And Allgood"

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Apr 21 - 05:41 PM

Here's Frank Jenkins performing "Baptist Shout." It sure sounds familiar, but I can't identify it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW9z2wdSmYw

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: GUEST,#
Date: 21 Apr 21 - 06:01 PM

The opening banjo picking made me think of "This Land of Ours" by Oscar Brand. The picking style is different, that's for sure.

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Apr 21 - 08:47 PM

Yup, that's the one, # - Brand called it Something to Sing About.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF0lqlyBE2Q

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: cnd
Date: 22 Apr 21 - 01:32 PM

Thanks for that Joe and #, I can definitely hear the resemblance.

Here's a few other versions of the tune which for me helped bridge the gap between Norman Blake's version and the Fred Jenkins version. The list of Spanish Fandango-named versions isn't exhaustive.

1925 - Smith & Algood (Okeh 45010-A) - Spanish and American Fandango
1927 - Fred Jenkins (Gennett 6187-B) - Babtist Shout
1938 - Pete Steele (Library of Congress) - Spanish Fandango
1957 - Oren Jenkins* (American Banjo Tunes & Songs In Scruggs Style, Folkways Records FA 2314) - Spanish Fan Dango
1962 - Art Rosenbaum (Folk Banjo Styles, Elektra EKL-217) - Spanish Fandango
1962 - Snuffy Jenkins (Carolina Bluegrass, Folk-Lyric FL 123) - Spanish Fandango
1964 - Winnie Winston (Old Time Banjo Project, Elektra ?EKL-276) - Spanish Fandango (no link but her version is reportedly similar to Oren's)
1966 - Lena Hughes (Oldtime Fiddling And Other Folk Music - 1966, Century Records 25425) - Spanish Fandango
1966 - Dock Boggs (Dock Boggs 1966, Field Recorders' Collective FRC312) - Spanish Fandango**
1970 - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy, Liberty LST-7642) - Uncle Charlie Interview #2 / Spanish Fandango
1972 - Norman Blake (Home In Sulphur Springs, Rounder Records 0012) - Spanish Fandango
1972 - A. J. Morris, Sr.(The Rackensack, Volume I, Rackensack Records LP 278) - Spanish Fandango
1973 - Pete Stanley & Roger Knowles ("Banjo Bounce", XTRA 1134) - Spanish Fandango
1972 - Roger Nicholson (The Gentle Sound Of The Dulcimer, Argo ZDA 204) - Spanish Fandango
1975 - Stacy Phillips (All Old Friends, Revonah Records RS-930) - Spanish Fandango
1986 - The Lazy Aces (Still Lazy After All These Years, Marimac Recordings 9008) - Spanish Fandango
1986 - Steve Garcia With Matt Levine (Marimac Recordings 9004) - Spanish Fandango
1991 - Doug Phillips and Roger Howell (Blue Ridge Mountain Music, Ivy Creek Recordings ICR 101) - Spanish Fandango
1991 - Etta Baker (One-Dime Blues, ROUNDER CD 2112) - Spanish Fandango
1992 - Dr. Horsehair's Old-Time Minstrels [Bob Flesher] (Old-Time Clawhammer Banjo, NOT ON LABEL) - Spanish Fandango (modern recording)

(A fuller list can be seen here under "Spanish Fandango #1")

* (no relation to Frank Jenkins, but nephew of Snuffy Jenkins
** some collections call this either Banjo Chimes or Coke Oven March rather than the proper name

I'll have to investigate a few more of the fandangos listed on this page too to see if I hear any similarities.

So, in summary

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: GUEST,#
Date: 22 Apr 21 - 02:08 PM

In the second part of the melody--if I recall it's two stanzas into the tune--I'm reminded of another melody, but it's from a long time ago. This may sound complicated, but imagine the triplets as single notes. The melody it brings to mind is something from the UK or Ireland. However, I will need to think on it for a while.

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout
From: cnd
Date: 26 Jul 22 - 08:26 AM

I heard another version of the song today, a very slow, almost pensive recording by E. K. Griggs, of Clinton, Arkansas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiOgkhcMunY

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout / Babtist Shout
From: Joe_F
Date: 26 Jul 22 - 09:10 PM

The p in "baptist" is indeed voiced ("babdis") in some US dialects -- I don't know which.

Subject: RE: Origins: Baptist Shout / Babtist Shout
From: cnd
Date: 13 Jan 24 - 11:04 PM

More related to Spanish Fandango than Baptist Shout (I couldn't find a thread dedicated to the former, and they're one in the same, anyhow) is the following excerpt from the liner notes of Lena Hughes: Queen of the Flat-Top Guitar I just picked up (the 2013 reissue, sadly, not the famously-rare original edition):

The reigning monarch of the parlor guitar repertoire was The Spanish Fandango, first published in the 1810s and subsequently rearranged and republished throughout the century. Its popularity reached epidemic proportions, driving erudite professors to distraction, but finding friends in the farthest reaches of the mail-order companies. The Fandango utilized the tuning DGDGBD which, along with the attendant chord positions, went straight into and shaped the form of early blues. All the great bluesmen from Charley Patton to Muddy Waters have played in 'Spanish.'

Although producers in the first wave of recordings made of rural performers in the '20s were expressly not on the look out for parlor pieces, several got through the net - Bo Carter, Frank Hutchison, John Dillishaw, Sam McGee. The folk revival brought about more documentation showing that versions of parlor pieces, and the Fandango in particular, still survived -- Leadbelly, Mance Lipscomb, John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten.

But Lena Hughes' versions are to my ears the closest we have to the sound of the actual peices as they would have been played as the tide was turning and the little guitar was about to be ousted from its comfortable surroundings by the more grandiose parlor organ.

The Spanish Fandango spawned a host of variants, many shamelessly similar.

I have linked the Lena Hughes recording previously up above