Well I was curious about Bob's book. He's got good credentials, hanging out with those Smithsonian folks and all. So I ordered one from him. It arrived last week but it wasn't until last night that I was able to break out a banjo and look through it. I was getting it with another picker starting out in mind. But there was things in there to help me too. A pulloff there where I hadn't thought of it, and I never could do that drop thumb stuff. He also tells of some of those delightful alternate tunings and how to get there from "G" and what to do when you get there. Now mind you, this book was done in '76. The old bicentennial. There weren't no CAD and there weren't no wordprocessors. You won't find full color images and fancy fonts. This book was made by hand. It's well laid out with good diagrams and some nice drawings placed here and there. There's even a drawing of Bob on the back. Though judging from his mudcat photo, he don't look as youthful as he did in '76. Well neither do I. Anyway, Bob don't know me from Adam. I'm just letting you folks know that here's a good book if you want to learn old-time banjo and it's well worth the price.

Rex