Beginning the 5-string Banjo

Me at Bovisands, Plymouth, England

Hi, my name is Roy and I play the 5-string banjo. Those of you who have read my blog before will know that I followed an historical timeline and traced the musical events in my life. I have now decided to change the format and write the blog in two parts. In the first part I will share what is happening now, my current experience as a fairly new banjo player, the music I am learning and the bluegrass music I love. The second part will return to the autobiographical timeline theme.  I hope this will make a more interesting read!

My Banjos and my Teacher

As I am approaching the age of 70 and have been playing the banjo for about 5 years, some would say that I started a little late in life. Anyway progress is being made, albeit slowly, and it is bringing me happiness and contentment. What more could I ask for?

My first banjo was an open back Lyons and Healy which I never actually learnt how to play. When I became a little more serious about learning I bought a Recording King. It was a beautiful instrument and sounded really good. Now I play a Japanese Maya 5-string custom made banjo. I do not know how old the latter is, nor have any other information about it. A musician in the town where I live sadly died and his widow offered it to me. It sounded better than the Recording King and so I decided to buy it.

My first banjo, a Lyons and Healy circa 1900

The Recording King

Two photographs  of the Maya Banjo

Many people have asked me how to play this unusual musical instrument. This is a difficult question because different people learn in different ways, there is no easy answer and no magic formula. I can only pass on my experience of what worked for me.

Firstly, I bought two beginners tutorial books (they come with CDs and/or DVDs).

Beginning the Banjo books by Ross Nickerson

Then, I taught myself the following:

(i)  a simple roll (a finger picking sequence which is repeated ad infinitum)
(ii)  the rudiments of banjo tablature
(iii)  a simple tune

Assuming you have come through that process unscathed and still want to be a banjo player then I recommend finding a teacher. I was lucky as I discovered a bluegrass banjo player (Martin Blake) living in Hereford, not far from me. Martin is a master of the finger picking blues guitar and the 3 finger picking bluegrass banjo. If you read banjo or guitar tablature you will find a wealth of excellent bluegrass and blues guitar material all free of charge on his website. Martin plays the banjo in the talented British bluegrass band called the Grass Snakes.

Grass Snakes photograph courtesy of Martin Blake

I am currently learning the following tunes/songs:

Steam Powered Aereoplane
Cherokee Shuffle
Fisher's Hornpipe

The link above will take you to a fantastic version of Steam Powered Aereoplane by the Grass Snakes. Martin has kindly posted the banjo tablature for this song on banjohangout for those who would like to have a go at playing it.

The Autobiographical Bit

In 1973 I graduated and I obtained a job in Darlington, County Durham as a computer programmer. Frankie and I moved to the north from Essex. After a brief period in a bed and breakfast and a short period in a flat we were able to rent a house. In London we had a room, in Braintree a flat and now a house, with a garden! We were moving up in the world and quickly settled into our new life.

Darlington Town Centre photograph courtesy of Alamy

It was not long before we had an addition to our family; a beautiful daughter called Natasha Carey, named after Natasha in Tolstoy's War and Peace (a Russian name was fairly unusual at the time) and Carey from Joni Michell's Blue album.

Baby Natasha

After 3 years Natasha had a beautiful sister called Laura Polly. Laura was named after the character who played Laura in the television western Little House on the Prairie. Polly was the name of Laura's great grandmother.

Little House on the Prairie photo courtesy of spinoff.comicbookresources.com

Natasha and Laura

Our time in Darlington was not long. An opportunity arose for me to lecture in Information Technology in London so we were on the move again.

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).