Club 47 trailer

Subject: Club 47 trailer
From: Mary Katherine
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 10:10 PM

Really cool trailer for this past January's 50th anniversary celebration of Club 47 (now Club Passim). They identify everyone with captions, otherwise I'd suggest a game of "who do you recognize from the Sixties?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX9OJMbhtdw

Subject: RE: Club 47 trailer
From: open mike
Date: 17 Oct 08 - 11:26 PM

what a great line up
Peter Rowan was there in the intro.

i once donated to an auction for club passim/.
i won an answering machine message composed
and recorded by greg brown--it was personalized!!

people from teh greg brown chat list used to call
just to hear the message!

Subject: RE: Club 47 trailer
From: open mike
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 11:58 AM

perhaps no one has responded to this thread because
they think it is about a mobile home?

or because they dc not know that Club Passim
was formerly known as club 47?

i recommend watching this if only to see the
banjo player at the end (Bill Kieth) tune
his instrument as he plays ("bend" the notes
by adjusting the tuners while the string is
being played)

Subject: RE: Club 47 trailer
From: PoppaGator
Date: 18 Oct 08 - 12:28 PM

What Bill Keith was doing was not twisting the "regular" tuning machines on the banjo. Banjos can be fitted with some kind of extra lever to sort of "toggle" the string back and forth between two preset notes. I'm pretty sure they're installed in addition to the regular tuning machines, not instead of them, and I think they may have been put on only two of the strings, although I'm less sure of that.

You can notice that each retuned string always goes back precisely into correct tune. That wouldn't be possible if the player were actually retuning the strings at that speed. The tuning at which you start the tune is basically "locked in," and the supplementary device lets you stretch the string to a different note (at a precise interval higher, or maybe lower) and then let it return to its exact original tension.

You used to see this "trick" performed all the time back in the folk-revival heyday, by players with appropriately-equipped banjos. I think those devices were originated by Earl Scruggs, but ~ not being a banjo player, just an observer ~ I don't know for sure.

Use of those whatchamacallits was an absolutely mandatory feature of playing one of the most popular banjo-virtuosou tour-de-foprce numbers, "Orange Blossom Special."

Subject: RE: Club 47 trailer
From: Midchuck
Date: 19 Oct 08 - 11:14 AM

Banjos can be fitted with some kind of extra lever to sort of "toggle" the string back and forth between two preset notes.

Like these.

I'm pretty sure they're installed in addition to the regular tuning machines, not instead of them,

I think that may be true of the first ones - they just pushed the string sideways. The modern ones do replace the original tuners.

...and I think they may have been put on only two of the strings, although I'm less sure of that.

Yes. They were set up to change the tuning from open G (DGBD) to open D (DAF#D), and back, so they were only needed on the 2nd and 3rd strings.

P.