My First Banjo

One weekend, on a return visit to Plymouth, I spotted a 5 string banjo in a junk shop window. I forget the price but it was affordable and I bought it. I had this romantic notion that it was played by a sailor who came ashore in Plymouth and being down on his luck had to sell it. I knew nothing about banjos and soon discovered it was in a sorry state and unplayable. I had it repaired in London.  It was an open back Lyons and Healy made in Chicago USA circa 1900.

 Banjos in a junk shop courtesy of aldenswan.com

Now I had  the little problem of how to play it. Learning the 5 string banjo in England in the 1960's was a difficult task. There was practically no tutorial books, no internet of course and therefore no on-line lessons. Almost all English music tutors only knew how to teach you the chords, to enable you to strum the 4 string banjo to play traditional jazz, and that is not what I wanted. The only tutorial books I could find were by Pete Seeger.

My first banjo tutorials

They were interesting but did not help me make any progress in playing in the Scruggs finger picking style I desired. As a result the banjo was confined to the attic of every house I lived in for the next 40 years or more!

One of the folk clubs I frequented in London was The Peanuts Club. It was run by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).  The club was in a room, with a bar, above a public house in Liverpool Street London. There was no entry charge, everyone who could play or sing or both performed. Some, like me, were not very good, others were excellent. One night I backed a lady singer and the organiser "paid" me with a pint of beer - I felt I had arrived in show business!

It was at the Peanuts Club that I first heard the 5 string banjo played in the bluegrass style. The banjo player was called Pete Stanley and he performed together with a guitarist called Wizz Jones.

Wizz and Pete in the early 60's courtesy of wizzjones.com

Oh how I wished I could play the banjo like that. I considered approaching Pete for lessons but then realised I would not be able to afford tuition. Their first album was "Sixteen tons of Bluegrass" released in 1966 on Columbia Records. The album cover is shown below.

If you are wondering what American Bluegrass played by two Englishmen in the mid 1960's sounded like follow the link.

I recall one evening Pete and Wizz did a very good version of "Frankie and Jonny" (hear them performing it 35 Years later).