[Dixielandjazz] Banjo - Redux

[Steve barbone]

> "Edgerton, Paul A" <paul.edgerton at eds.com> wrote:

> Steve Barbone wrote:
>> And Louis Armstrong's Hot Five did not have a banjo.
> 
> If Johnny St. Cyr weren't already dead, you just finished him off!
> 
> 
> -- Paul (Or was that some sort of test?) Edgerton

You got it Paul. Congratulations. Der Banjo plugger who insisted I must have
one, did not, and totally ignored my answer because he didn't know. So much
for a so called Dixieland banjo expert. :-) VBG.

My note was about audience knowledge and bias, Its point was not that banjos
are bad as many folks immediately seem to erroneously infer, but that:

When anyone starts a discourse that ONLY CERTAIN INSTRUMENTS fit a Dixieland
concept, that person is WRONG, or as Bill Haesler would say, "ONE EYED"
about the subject.

Here we had just finished a DIXIELAND performance to RAVES. And then some
dufus comes up and says if you don't have a banjo, it ain't Dixieland. HUH?
EXCUSE ME? 

Or when folks say, hey, Condon sometimes played banjo so there were banjo
bands in NYC. Yes, of course there were. . . but not many "MANY" which was
the qualifying word in my post. The MAJORITY of Dixieland in NYC, 40s - 70s
was played without banjo. How do I know? I was there.

Did I say banjos were bad? Of course not. How could I? At one point in my
youth I played with Lee Blair and Danny Barker in NYC. More recently I
played with Al Smith, Frannie Smith, Steve DeBonaventura and Debbie
Schreyer. 

So, banjo lovers and banjo players of the world, stop feeling so insecure
about yourselves. Banjos are great. But you can also play great Dixieland
without one. And that statement is adaptable to ALL of the other
instruments. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone