The Banjo- Into the 20th Century (Part 5)

The Civil War was a major force in the evolution of the banjo, with banjo players of all backgrounds - North and South, black and white, coming together and ultimately sharing knowledge and appreciation of the instrument. With the war fought and emancipation won, soldiers returned home, spreading this newfound banjo knowledge throughout the growing United States. Along with the physical changes, the sociological changes resulting from the coincidental cultural exchange during the Civil War led to “proper” society elevating the banjo from its earlier perceived place among the “lower classes” to a position of acceptance and respectability. Soon to be gone was the low comedy associated with the minstrel show. The stage was set for a new age of refinement in banjo performance and design.

As the banjo took its place as an icon of American popular music during the minstrel age, it evolved physically to reflect the advances in banjo making and the needs of its players. The rustic appearance of primitive banjos was replaced with the familiar round bodied instrument which, by the 1870s, had acquired a fretted fingerboard as well. Manufacturers added frets to banjos to make them easier to play for beginners, and these became a standard part for most manufactured banjos while people continued to make their own fretless and gourd banjos at home. In the same years, banjo based instruments aimed at taking the place of various orchestra mainstays. Instruments such as the banjo cello, banjo-bass, mandolin banjo, and banjo mandolin flourished for a while as banjo orchestras became popular particularly among college students.

Banjo playing expanded in the late 19th Century when classic banjo finger-picking styles made the banjo a popular instrument among the upper classes and social elites of the US and Britain. The classical style featured right hand technique similar to classical guitar in which the fingertips pluck the strings upward. Efforts were made to distance the banjo from its African origins and its continued popularity among some rural whites and blacks. Nevertheless the outstanding players of the period were men like Horace Weston and Gus Cannon, African-Americans who excelled at the classic, ragtime, and traditional African-American banjo styles.













By the late nineteenth century the banjo had become a popular parlor instrument. A new class of banjo players emerged, including middle and upper-middle class ladies. Banjo manufacturers, eager to supply this market began to produce ornate instruments of more delicate proportions that included ebony fingerboards with engraved mother of pearl and necks with carved floral patterns.
Between 1890 and 1920 the popularity of minstrel music was eclipsed by early jazz forms, such as ragtime. The popularity of the banjo as a parlor instrument fell into decline. The features that made the banjo ideal for minstrel music became liabilities when attempting the complex chord structures of jazz. These include a reliance on “open” tunings (strings tuned to a note in a chord being played) and the drone string which plays at a constant pitch.

Prior to the jazz age of the 1920s, the banjo - by definition - was an instrument with five strings. Those strings, made of natural fiber, were plucked with the bare fingers to play the refined dance and light classical music heard in America's parlors and concert halls of the time. However, as ragtime music prepared proper society for the dramatic changes about to occur in the dance music of America, the banjo experienced an extraordinary and rapid evolution as well.
In the early 1900s, this new craze, centering around the latin tango and pulling from African American blues song structures, coincided with the introduction of brass and reed instruments in the typical Ragtime dance orchestra.


In an effort to simply be heard, classic five-string banjo players began experimenting, often removing the fifth string altogether and replacing the remaining four natural fiber strings with strings made of steel. For additional volume, rather than plucking the steel strings with bare fingers in the traditional manner, they were strummed with a plectrum or pick. As the long neck of the classic five-string banjo was not made to support the tension of steel strings without warping, banjo designers tried a shorter neck, similar in length to the mandolin. That connection was taken a step further by tuning the four strings of the short neck banjos in musical intervals identical those used on the mandolin. All of these experiments came together with the 1907 introduction of the banjorine by the J.B. Schall Company of Chicago - the first true jazz age banjo.


Just as the Civil War was a turning point in the development of the banjo, World War I played a similar role. American soldiers, turning their back on European culture, favored American jazz, craving its upbeat and carefree feel both as they fought on foreign soil as well as when they returned to the U.S. following the war's end in 1918. The music of the jazz age became synonymous with the sound of the new four-string tenor and plectrum banjos.

The Charleston-esque rhythm of the era made the banjo the most popular instrument in country and its players the mainstream pop music icons. These stars fit right into Vaudeville, a form of variety show which featured many different kinds of entertainment, depending on the town and theater and type of crowd. The "banjo entertainer" was very popular in these shows and on early radio, in which the banjo was used by singers who told jokes, did comic songs, and generally "cut up." While difficult to comprehend, vaudeville banjo stars such as Eddie Peabody and Roy Smeck were every bit as popular as any of today's entertainment superstars. So during the 1920s, the banjo reached a level in design and manufacture that it would never reach again. With the demand for ten of thousands of instruments, manufacturers dedicated all of their resources to banjo design and production. In addition to perfecting the banjo as a musical instrument, the ornate decoration adorning the instruments reflects the artistry of their creators as well as the demand to produce a dynamic visual impact on a large theater audience in that era before television and sound films.

The 1920's are fondly remembered for the carefree attitude that prevailed through the decade, but it was also a somewhat lawless time in which many widely accepted social, business and political values were cast aside in the midst of post-W.W. I euphoria. The resulting catastrophic collapse of the stock market and Great Depression which followed marked the end of the jazz age- the final years in which the banjo held a place of prominence in American popular music. By 1940, the banjo in the jazz and popular music format could not be found. But it was time for the traditional banjo music of the Upland South and Appalachian mountains to be heard again.