your favourite banjo player

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 07:39 PM

Tom, I knew you were back. I can recognize the fetid aroma of coyote breath from a long way off.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 05:25 PM

Cookie back!!

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 05:14 PM

Mike Seeger was mentioned once (by Frank Hamilton, how are ya Frank?) but for me, and who am I, right? I feel closest to Uncle Dave Macon, The Dixie Dewdrop.

And for real live players Mike Seeger cannot be beat (though Cathy Barton comes close) I have been following Mike's music since the first New Lost City Ramblers and His recent CD, Southern Banjo Sounds, demonstrates that he has only improved with age. He can play any of the styles associated with the Five (or six or seven or nine) string banjo and knows the music better than anyone I have ever met.

Bela Fleck is "interesting" but I don't feel a connection to either him or his music as I do with Macon or Mike S.

For sweet, simple old timey claw hammer, listen, also, to Gail Fratar from out in California.

When I play, these people, even Bela Fleck, are listening over my shoulder and I try to play in a fashion that is worthy of them.

But the banjoist who truly influenced me the most is Peter Stampfel. In a very direct way. When ever I'd get a chance to hear him, in various Milwaukee coffee houses and once or twice in the 'village', I'd realize that playing the banjo is quite a lot of FUN! as well as musically entertaining. Thanks Pete. My daughter has your book now.

And last, but not least, my old friend Ken Haferman who played a real nice fretless.

TJM

coyote breath without his cookie

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: MissouriMud
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 12:15 PM

Landreth plays great with frets too - very fast and accurate frailing. We have a lot of top notch old time banjo players in the St Louis area including Dave, Jeff Miller and Andy Gribble. Not much national market for the cd's so unless you go to major Appalachian or Ozark music festivals you dont hear of them much out of the area.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 10:53 AM

Fretless banjo sounds fascinating, is it a bit like Eastern European instruments?

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 10:49 AM

Dave Landreth from here in Illinois does wonderful old -timey banjo, but on a fretless banjo. There is a fine CD out that highlights his music.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: JudyB
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 10:29 AM

I must confess that my favorite banjo player is Charlie Ipcar (better known around these parts as Charley Noble). Of course, he's my favorite in a lot of categories!

Doing the type of intense listening that's required when we recorded and mastered his CD made me aware of the many different ways of playing he has and led me to see that playing a banjo well is a lot more complicated than I had realized.

    JudyB

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Jun 05 - 12:46 AM

Yeah, Jed I was there with you for that fiasco. However, Chris Newman and Maire Ni Chasathaigh more than made up for it.
That's also where I met Chris Grotewohl. He fingerpicks Irish tunes on a 5-string, standard G tuning, and you'd swear it was a tenor. Amazing!

Seamus

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Scoville
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 11:05 PM

my friend Amber

and Tommy Thompson (Red Clay Ramblers)

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,bodhran bliss
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 05:25 PM

Mickey Maguire from Crumlin in N.Ireland. A one man aggressive session on the tenor.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 02:53 PM

Guy Wolff and Geoff the Duck

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: 12string growler
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 02:37 PM

My fave banjo pluckeris none other than Mudact's own Banjo Flower.
Arthritic fingers, but he does his best. You should see the amazing artwork on his banjo, it's a joy to behold, and it's even signed by the artist. M Gott 1988.

Chris

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Steve-o
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 02:29 PM

Gene Parsons of the "Stringbender" device for guitars is a very tasteful banjo player.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 02:19 PM

Kathy Fink has a nice touch. Met her at Jacob's Ladder about 10 years ago. Didn't she learn from the Seegers?

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Arnie
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 02:16 PM

Oh ya more- Living: Dan Gellert, Molly Tennenbaum, Kathy Fink

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Gern
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 12:50 PM

I can't resist a thread like this. One of the best I ever heard was Jens Kruger of the Kruger Brothers. This is a blugrass-ish act from Switzerland that has found enthusiastic audiences in America. Jens can give you fast and crisp bluegrass banjo, very fluent clawhammer and bursts of classical music thrown in with a sense of humor. Don't miss him if you get the chance. Otherwise, depnding on the type of banjo I'm in the mood for, I especially like Grandpa Jones, J. D. Crowe, Uncle Dave Macon, Frank Lee (formerly of the Freight Hoppers), Leroy Troy and Tommy Jarrell. Although I don't usually follow what he's up to, I know no more dextrous banjo player than Bela Fleck.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 12:20 PM

Wade Ward. But I can't list a favorite banjo player without acknowledging Pete Seeger, too.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: JedMarum
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 11:06 AM

steve martin

;-)

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 11:04 AM

Burt Reynolds

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: JedMarum
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 10:25 AM

Yes - Mick Moloney for Irish Tenor - a very fine, very precise player.

Seamus were you with me at the North Texas Irish Festival when Mick was playing? I think you and Ed and I were there as the show was about to begin - but the poor, unskilled bastard at the console was struggling with continuous squeels and screetches of feed-back. Mick and his large entourage were sitting, cross armed, and fed up with this nonesense - and after 15 minutes of grief, finally the accordian player spoke up to the man at the console - and said over his microphone for all the world to hear, "so when did you go deaf?"

I wanted to crawl on the floor for the poor sound man - but I'm afraid he deserved it. He had no business running the console for a show like that.

... anayway - sorry for the thread creep.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 10:19 AM

Oh, not my favorite but very close to it, is Billy Connolly.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GLoux
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 10:13 AM

Arnie's list is a great start on my list of favorites, except he's on it, too. I was hoping someone would mention Walt Koken.

I have to add Pete Peterson (for channelling Charlie Poole), Joe Newberry, Ray Alden, Paul Sidlick, Richie Stearns, Nancy Sluys, Diane Jones, Reed Martin, Marvin Gaster, Paul Brown, and there are still more, but I'll stop here.

-Greg

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: JennyO
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 09:56 AM

Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs performed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies", and sometimes appeared in the show doing the occasional guest spot.

I also remember seeing Maybelle Carter playing autoharp on the show too, but that's probably material for another thread.

Jenny

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: woodsie
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 08:33 AM

Jerry Garcia was pretty good although famous as a guitarist, he started out on bamjo.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Arnie
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 08:25 AM

Some of the Living: Walt Koken, Michael Cooney, Mike Seeger, Bertram Levy, Bob Carlin and my buddies Chris Coole, Chris Quinn, Brian Taheny
Some of the dead: Charlie Poole, Dave Macon, Dock Boggs, Fred Cockerham, John Hartford
Arnie

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: kendall
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 07:55 AM

Guest Greycap, I didn't forget Granpa Jones.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Songsmith
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 07:43 AM

How about young Mr. Podolak of the Duhks...

Jim

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 07:04 AM

Too many to mention, but ...

Great players from the US have to include for me Bela Fleck, Bill Keith, Tony Trischka, Bobby Thompson, Butch Robbins, Pat Cloud, Tony Furtado.

In the UK I love to hear Garry Finlayson (shooglenifty) and the man who plays very tastefully on a number of Rory MacLeod's albums (whose names totally escapes for the moment - help!).

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Greycap
Date: 20 Jun 05 - 06:28 AM

How come everybody forgot ol' Louis Marshall (Grandpa) Jones?
Pete Stanley, too.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Susan A-R
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 10:58 PM

I'm pretty partial to Bela's playing, he's taken the instrument way beyond the usual, and usually I like it a lot. I've also just come off a week of listening to the beautiful, clean playing of Ken Perlman. Nice clawhammer style, and also great finger style guitar and banjo. Heard him in a late night jam playing melody lines with Sandy MacIntyre on Cape Breton tunes. Sandy's not a slow player and Ken made it sound simple and didn't give it a frenetic feel. I was awe-struck.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 10:52 PM

For Irish Tenor - Mick Moloney, Barney McKenna, Martin Murray.
For 5 -String - Chris Grotewohl.

Seamus

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 10:06 PM

I think one of my favorites was/is the late wild man named PAT DUNFORD. His was an old-timey frailed mountain style mostly. Pure taste--with a great love for the traditions.

Art Rosenbaum is a great artist with a banjo I've always felt. His "Texas Rangers" picked mt. style is just about perfect.

Obray Ramsey too. He blended Scruggs and old-timey.

Bascon Lamar Lunsford--in his very own unique way.

Pete Seeger has always been an ispiration and a mentor for me.

And hanging out with John Hartford on the Mississippi River for ten years drove home for me what a true musical genius he was. The garlic and the dental floss etc. etc. aside, John could've blown his audiences away playing his banjo faster and with more notes than anyone ever had or did before in every set he ever did. But he usually CHOSE not to do that! He adopted the simpler way, because he could convey and transmit his love of things river-related better by being subtle.

And Grandpa Jones will always be in my list of favorites. He took an hour or two out before one of his shows to correct some of what he could easily hear I was doing wrong when, as a 24 year old Chicago kid, I wasn't rapping/knocking/frailing the banjo right.

Thanks for some of your kind words here. My style, though, was backup---for my singing--on banjo and guitar. I was usually telling a musical tale of sorts--so I wanted the words to get pushed forward by my banjo playing. I did what I could; put bits and pieces I picked up from unknowns and also several of those mentioned in this thread, and hanging here at Mudcat. I put it together in a way that definitely wasn't copying anyone exactly---because I wasn't able (talented enough) to do that. Limited to what I could do, and spurred on by what I wanted to do and say, I wound up inventing my own cliches. That gave me a pretty basic, even somewhat recognizable STYLE of my own. (What is a personal style other than inventing and using your own cliches in your own way---either by musical design, or because of various and sundry musical limitations and/or talents?)

I loved the banjo equal to the guitar. It always calmed me to pick it up and fool with it. I say that even though it wasn't as versatile as the guitar. (You could learn 3 or 4 chords on a guitar and backup anything. OR you could study it your whole life, like Segovia or Tal Farlow, and end up not having learned the half of it.) But what an advanture it was/is!

Now you know some of why I wrote on my banjo head, "This Machine Kills Time!!"---------- That's exactly what I did with it.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: kendall
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 08:30 PM

Too many to name, including Jed Marum, Art Thieme, Cathy Barton, Frank Shaw, Pete Seeger, and probably my all time favorite, Granpa Jones.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Charmion
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 08:26 PM

Brian Taheny, who plays anything with strings and frets but is a particular genius on the tenor banjo.

Bela Fleck, a flat-out musical genius who has taken the banjo sound into so many imaginative directions.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Enderby
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 08:21 PM

Barney Mc Kenna

The ultimate version of 'The Mason's Apron' on any instrument.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 05:32 PM

Breezy said:

The word frayling has not emerged, is that what you guys call clawhammer? cos it aint that for me.

Pete Seeger did it good

I'm not QUITE sure what you mean by the above, but I'll say that Pete Seeger did/does not normally do either frailing or clawhammer. He did/does a three-finger up-pick, which he calls "the basic strum".

I agree, however, "Pete did it good", whatever "it" is. Wonderful stylistic judgment, as well as facility.

The difference between frailing and clawhammer (for those who will admit there is ANY difference) is that clawhammer tends to make a lot more use of double-thumbing, drop-thumbing, hammer-ons, and pull-offs, with less reliance on the continual sounding of the thumb-string.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: GUEST,Lutz Eikelmann
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 04:57 PM

1. Peter"Banjo"Meyer, Germany
2. Lonnie Donegan, UK
3. Udo Jägers, Germany
4. Sean Moyses, UK
5. Manfred Möhl, Germany
6. Emanuel Sayles, USA
7. Johnny St.Cyr, USA
8. Harry Reser, USA

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 04:40 PM

It's a long time ago, Jenny-O, but I believe you're right.

They were absolutely magic together.

Don T.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Tradsinger
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 04:09 PM

For old timey style, Reed Martin gets my vote. Dwight Diller and Sheila Kay Adams should get honourable mentions.

For English style, I've heard no-one better than Rod Murch.

Gwilym

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 03:04 PM

Del McCoury was a banjo player. He was hired by Bill Monroe to play banjo, but then Bill found Bill Keith (or vice-versa) and Del swtiched to Guitar.

J.D. Crowe is an absolute master of Back up Bluegrass banjo.

Kenny Ingram is another of my favourites.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: number 6
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 02:57 PM

Thanks Rob for straightening that out with Freda.

BTW ... say hi to your dad for me!

sIx

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: akenaton
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 12:30 PM

Although Martin Simpson is better known for his virtuoso guitar , I've heard him play dance music on the banjo and it was great.
"Shoot the turkey buzzard" was one of the tunes, cant remember the names of the others....Ake

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Big Mick
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 11:57 AM

I'm with Jed on this one. Chris Coole is an absolute wonder. Listen to him on Rick Fielding's version of "High On A Mountain". He demonstrates the real mark of a master, that is he takes a simple riff and fills it with perfect yet simple adornment. The result ..... a stunning performance, elegant yet simple. And don't worry, when it's time to go like hell, he can do that too.

And Jed is no slouch either. How the hell did a hack like me get so lucky as to know these people? Oh   ......   Yeah ..... it was the Mudcat.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: breezy
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 11:55 AM

Must admit to not having had much banjo at our club though Moses has impressed us with her attempts and could go further

That Del Mc version of R T's Vincent is very comunicative.I like it and it was on Folk on 2 recently

I heard Ralph Stanley and was most impressed

Locally I admire Derek Brimstone who is most entertaining and charming

leadfingers ,you are right, we all wish you could play

The word frayling has not emerged, is that what you guys call clawhammer? cos it aint that for me.

Pete Seeger did it good

Subject: To Freda Underhill
From: GUEST,Rob McCoury
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 11:28 AM

To Freda Underhill:

Del McCoury is my dad. He's a guitar player. I play the banjo in his band.

Rob McCoury

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Severn
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 08:47 AM

When Scruggs used to do a duet number spotlight every set in the old days, it was with Paul Warren, The Foggy Mountain Boys' great breakdown fiddler.



Severn

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: number 6
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 08:11 AM

Del McCoury ?????

Thanks for the posts ... there are many names that have been posted that I am unaware of and will certainly look them up. I'm also interested in knowing some names of the great New Orleans tenor banjo players.

much appreciated everyone!

sIx

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 06:54 AM

Oops, you are quite right, Paddy's brother is Johnny.

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 06:19 AM

Earl Scruugs brother was called Junie, he too was a superb banjoist.

eric

Subject: RE: your favourite banjo player
From: JennyO
Date: 19 Jun 05 - 05:42 AM

Don, that was Lester Flatt who used to play with Earl Scruggs, wasn't it?