Scan 60
Musical Courier 1893-05-17: Vol 26 Iss 689, 1893
33 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 61. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Popularity of the Banjo.
2By S. S. Stewart.
4ABOUT twenty years ago I was attracted sufficiently to the banjo to become inspired with a desire to acquire a knowledge of the instrument. I am not positive in what year I first heard a banjo played, but think it must have been about 1870, and the first performer was Lew. Simmons, who was at that time connected with Carn-cross and Dixey's minstrels at the Eleventh Street Opera House in Philadelphia. The performances at that time were merely songs with banjo accompaniment and "jigs."
6Not long after this I had the pleasure of listening to Harry Stanwood, at that time a noted performer upon the banjo, and also to Lew. Brimmer, another prominent banjoist. The music played at that time was by no means what could be called "classical," but what Stanwood played calls to mind the expression of Julian Hawthorne, the well-known novelist, "It is the music of nature, ordered and humanized—" for there were good banjos here and there even in those days, and there were a few—such as banjoist Stanwood—who could bring this soul-stirring music of nature out of them.
8I was so much smitten with the charms of the banjo that from that time to the present I have never ceased to devote a good portion of my time to the study and practice of the instrument. I have now been engaged in the banjo manufacturing business for about fifteen years, and during that time I have had an opportunity for very close and extended observation, and have not failed to mark the various progressive steps in the evolution of the banjo as the wheels of time revolved.
10Seventeen years ago there were very few banjos exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. I think I can remember but one very small case containing these instruments. The musical instrument department at the great Chicago World's Fair, now in operation, tells a different story. Many of our most prominent manufacturers have large cases of guitars, mandolins, zithers and banjos, and the banjo is a prominent feature. I believe, however, that I am the only manufacturer who makes a display of banjos exclusively—to which my entire space of 6×20 feet is devoted.
12I do not think that any such display of banjos as I have made at the World's Fair in this year has ever been seen elsewhere; however, I must leave that to speak for itself; suffice it to say that I deem the display of sufficient importance to have a representative constantly in attendance during the continuance of the exhibition. This gentleman, Mr. Geo. B. Ross, of Philadelphia, who has taken the position spoken of in Chicago, was for some time a teacher in this city, and is fully competent to show the various points of interest to observers who may desire to inspect the banjos.
14This World's Fair display will serve to exemplify the contrast between the banjo as known in 1876 and the banjo as it is made and used in the Columbian year.
16At the time of the Centennial celebration few persons were to be encountered who were at all familiar with a banjo. In fact, did you speak of a banjo to the casual observer ten chances to one he would have thought it was a tambourine you were talking about. Few people used the banjo then in the parlor. There was little or no sheet music published for the instrument—there was absolutely no music published for the banjo with piano accompaniment; and what few books of instruction there were were very incomplete and little adapted to the purpose of instruction. Thus, without a suitable literature, with poor instruments, and with very few competent instructors, there was nothing to give the banjo an upward impetus.
18But the under current was at work even if a ripple was not observed. All this time those interested in the instrument were quietly making a scientific study of it, and their influence was sooner or later to tell.
20Thus it was that about the year 1880 music began to make its appearance, published specially for the banjo, in the precise shape of music for the piano and other instruments. True at first there were few customers for the music, as there were but a scattered few who could play such music, and these scattered few were so far apart that it required much time and expense to reach them. There were any number of pretenders at banjo playing. You could find them at every hand, but the competent performer or those who had sufficient real love for the instrument to wish to elevate it were not so easily found.
22Many real lovers of the banjo at this time played in secret—were ashamed to be known as banjo players—and therefore never took the instrument out with them. A few others, like Albert Baur, now a justice of the peace in Brookville, Pa., defied musical opinion, and insisted upon introducing their banjos wherever they could. To such pioneers we owe much.
24It then remained that the only place where a banjo could be heard in public was at the negro minstrel entertainments or variety shows, and the performances heard at such places were not such as were calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of musicians. The negro minstrel using the banjo soon caused it to be associated with the black face exclusively, and it being a very rare thing to see a banjo player on the stage in white face, it is not to be wondered at that the instrument should become more and more associated with the negro.
26There were a few performers who played a banjo solo in evening dress without cork on the face—such as William A. Huntley and Chas. E. Dobson—but the opportunity of hearing such performers was not very great, and the number of people who had such opportunity was greatly in the minority.
28Occasionally, as the change progressed, a banjo solo would creep into the program of a really first-class musical entertainment. Such performers as Frank B. Converse, of New York, appeared at musicales, and the sound of the banjo, mingling with the accompanying tones of the piano, was heard in the parlors of the refined. Then inquiries began at the various music stores for music adapted to the banjo; calls for banjos from a class of people who had never before thought of the instrument became more and more numerous. Mr. Converse's services in New York were greatly sought after by those among the higher social and musical classes who had suddenly become interested in a before unknown instrument, and who now desired instruction. Teachers multiplied, and as is always the case, a great many incompetent ones, seeing an opportunity to turn an honest penny, embraced the opportunity of becoming "professors of the modern banjo." Many of course took up the banjo, as a fad or passing fancy, and among such were a great number who possessed no knowledge of the rudiments of music, and who disliked to study anything, and the mushroom professors lost no time in devising various methods for teaching such persons to play the banjo without study, just enough to get the money for a course of lessons in advance. To these various schemes we are indebted for many of the really wretched performers who have continued to give the banjo a bad name, by misrepresenting its capabilities, and we do not blame those, who having derived their impressions of the instrument from its misuse by such persons, if they continue even at this day to assert that there is no music in a banjo. There certainly is no music in a violin in the hands of a person who cannot play the violin.
30Give such an instrument to a wretched bungler, and the sounds from it are not such as will attract the music lover. Now, the sounds produced from a banjo in the hands of an equally incompetent performer may not be so harsh and shocking, but they will be unmusical, to say the least.
32It therefore follows that in order to derive satisfaction
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