Track Listing

1. Coo Coo - John Snipes
2. Coo Coo - Dink Roberts
3. Old Rattler (Fox Chase) - John Snipes
4. Georgie Buck - Dink Roberts
5. Georgia Buck - Joe Thompson, Odell Thompson
6. John Henry - James Roberts, James Roberts
7. High Sheriff - Dink Roberts
8. John Hardy - Dink Roberts
9. Garfield - Dink Roberts
10. Old Corn Liquor - Dink Roberts
11. Old Corn Liquor - Joe Thompson, Odell Thompson
12. John Henry - Joe Thompson, Odell Thompson
13. Love Somebody - Joe Thompson, Tommy Thompson
14. Long Tail Blue - John Snipes
15. Ain't Gonna Rain No More - John Snipes, Tommy Thompson
16. Going Where I've Never Been Before - John Snipes
17. Black Annie - Dink Roberts
18. Old Blue - Dink Roberts
19. Going Away from Home - John Snipes
20. You Don't Know My Darling - John Snipes
21. Jaybird March - Etta Baker, Cora Phillips
22. Going Up North - John Jackson
23. Sugar Hill - Uncle Homer Walker
24. Mama Don't Allow - Leonard Bowles, Irvin Cook
25. Shortnin' Bread - Leonard Bowles
26. Shortnin' Bread - Lewis "Big Sweet" Hairston
27. Fox Chase - John Tyree
28. Roustabout - Dink Roberts
29. Cookin' in the Kitchen - John Snipes
30. Coo Coo Bird - Rufus Kasey
31. Fox Chase - Dink Roberts
32. Little Brown Jug - Joe Thompson, Odell Thompson, Tommy Thompson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88759 in Music
• Released on: 1998-02-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Album Description
The sounds and social history of African American banjo playing--32 superb instrumentals and vocals, recorded between 1974 and 1997. Extensively annotated with performer's life histories, tunings, lyrics, bibliography, and discography. The banjo's gourd ancestors came to the Americas with enslaved Africans, forging the link between West African griots and performers of 20th-century blues and string-band music. 64 minutes.

Amazon.com
This is more than just another excellently researched, heavily-annotated, and well-recorded Smithsonian Folkways disc of archival old-time sound. Like recordings of fife and drum music, this collection documents a rich African American musical tradition that was all but lost by the 1970s. The textbooks tell us that the banjo was brought to America by enslaved Africans, but the majority of musicians who've recorded with that instrument are white. While many of these modal, story-based folk songs will be familiar--"Coo Coo," "John Henry," "Shortnin' Bread"--there's an edge to these versions that's firmly rooted in the blues. Black Banjo Songsters is an essential compilation of claw-hammer-style banjo playing and deep, Appalachian singing. It happens to redress a historical wrong, but it's also a grand recording of deep, raw folk. --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews

A treasure for old-time music lovers, anthropologists & you
Archival, yes, but the music contained on this CD is more vital than you can imagine. It must be heard to be believed. Listening to the likes of John Snipes and Dink Roberts changed my life. This is banjo music to calm the weary soul...and give it just the bit of thrill we all deserve. Plus, buying CDs on the Smithsonian/Folkways label is a way to help them continue their valuable work.

A real "Before The Blues" CD
Only two of the tunes on this CD, "Going Where..." and "Going Away...," are closely related to blues music, in both cases very early blues music. The other thirty tracks are honest-to-goodness 19th-century-style, pre-blues, non-blues folk music -- a whole earlier animal than blues music, which didn't arise until about 1900. For instance, "John Hardy" is about a real West Virginian who was hanged in 1894 (coincidentally the year Dink Roberts was born); "John Hardy" isn't a blues song, and no one has ever found evidence of _any_ blues song existing as early as 1894.

For 19th-century-style banjo, by musicians who were immersed in it during the 1900s to 1930s when they were young and it was still very well-known in some rural areas, you can't do better than this remarkable CD. Many of these banjoists learned their tunes first-hand from banjoists who were born around the 1870s.

If this is your cup of tea, some other wonderful banjoists who recorded similar pre-blues, non-blues folk music, all born in the late 19th century, would be Belton Reese, Jake Staggers, Nathan Frazier, Sidney Stripling, Bill Cornett, Will Slayden, and H.N. Dickens.

You are going to want this!
Wonderful CD--some bizarre song content that makes you glad that is in an unedited collection of songs. Free form thoughts just pouring out--you really feel like you are there sitting next to these people. This is authentic old music--not for people who sort-of like old stuff. I recommend this CD, it is one that I've passed around to 5 or 6 friends. Stuff most people haven't heard unless they listen to esoteric public radio broadcasts in the back woods at 6 AM.