Big Banjo Special
To kick off the new time slot, it seemed appropriate to do a Banjo-centric episode to showcase some of my favorite recordings.
“When you want genuine music — music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, — when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!”
-Mark Twain
..well maybe not ALL that, but the Banjo is still pretty swell nonetheless.
Playlist
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Etta Baker & Cora Phillips, “Baby I'll Be True to You”
from Carolina Breakdown
Music Maker Recordings - 2005
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Pete Steele, “Galilee”
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings/Folkways Records - 1958
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Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “I Wish I Was a Mole In the Ground”
from Ballads, Banjo Tunes and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings - 1996
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Wilmer Watts & His Lonely Eagles, “Been on the Job Too Long”
from The Rise And Fall Of Paramount Records
Third Man - 1929
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Charlie Poole & Lucy Terry, “Don't Let Your Deal Go Down Medley”
Rebel Records - 2005
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"Uncle" Homer Walker, “Cripple Creek”
from Virginia Traditions: Non-Blues Secular Black Music
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings / Blue Ridge Institute - 2015
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B.F. Shelton, “Darling Cora”
from Man of Constant Sorrow (And Other Timeless Mountain Ballads)
Yazoo - 2006
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Roscoe Holcomb, “Sitting On Top of This World”
from An Untamed Sense of Control
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings - 2003
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Clarence Ashley, “House Carpenter”
from Clarence Ashley & Tex Isley
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings/Folkways Records - 2004
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John Snipes, “Old Rattler (Fox Chase)”
from Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings - 1998
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J.C. "Cleve" Sutphin, “Banjo Instrumental”
from Close to Home: Old Time Music from Mike Seeger's Collection, 1952-1967
Smithsonian Folkways - 1997
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Papa Charlie Jackson, “Baby Please Loan Me Your Heart”
from Forgotten Blues
Black & Partners LLC - 2014
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Parker and Dodd, “Sail Away Ladies”
from Times Ain't Like They Used To Be: Early American Rural Music, Vol. 2
Yazoo
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Charlie Poole & The North Carolina Ramblers, “If the River Was Whiskey”
from Let's Get Drunk Again - Booze-Fueled Blues, Bluegrass, Hillbilly, and R 'n' B from 1920s-1950s
Viper - 2005
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Chubby Parker & His Old Time Banjo, “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O”
from King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O - Single
2020 For the Record/DO IT Records - 2020
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Samantha Bumgarner, “Georgia Blues”
from Hard Times Come Again No More: Early American Rural Songs of Hard Times and Hardships, Vol. 1
Yazoo - 2006
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Woody Guthrie, “Muleskinner Blues”
from The Asch Recordings, Vols. 1-4
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings - 1999
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Cousin Emmy, “Johnny Booker”
from The Story That the Crow Told Me: Early American Rural Children's Songs, Vol. 1
Yazoo - 2006
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Joe Thompson & Odell Thompson, “Ol Corn Liquor”
from Going Down to Raleigh: Stringband Music in the North Carolina Piedmont 1976-1998
PineCone
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Ferman Tapp and His Banjo, “Gonna Find Myself a Brand New Sweetie”
from Wait for Me: Songs of Love, Lust and Discontent from the 1920s and 1930s
East River Records - 2015
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Dink Roberts, “Georgia Buck (Georgie Buck)(Never Let a Woman Have Her Way)”
from Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings - 1998
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Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters, “John Brown's Dream”
from Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters & Frank Jenkins' Pilot Mountaineers (1927-1929)
Document Records - 1998
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