I have finished the first draft of my article on Gus Cannon, here are some of
the braod or narrow conclusions


There is so much that we do not know but need to find out about Black finger
picking banjo and about how Blacks and others played five string banjo in
commercial entertainment at the height of the banjo's popularity at the turn of
the century that what we can figure out now is educated conjecture that needs to
be followed up by mnore research. A number of sources exist. One that stands
out is the archives of African American newspapers, particularly
entertainment-industry oriented publications like the Indianapolis Freeman,
source for Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff's work on the Black entertainment
industry. Indeed, my chapter on Cannon will begin with a quotation from the
Freeman that Abbott and Seroff found, that was not published in their book,
reporting on a 1919 appearance by Hosea Woods and Gus Cannon in Kentucky.

Cannon's travels first as a black worker trying to make a living as a laborer
and share cropper int he Mississippi Valley, and then as an entertainer
traveling throughout the Deep South and through much of the Midwest with
Medicine shows points to the idea that rather local or regional African American
banjo styles, by the turn of the century national African American banjo styles
may have crystalized either out of common ancestry and very wide-ranging
interchange. This is particularly true if we include the world of commercial
entertainment which from its lowest levels has been characterized by massive
touring across the US from colonial times.

Cannon played no one style of banjo, but played at least five styles that he
gave names to in his 1967 interview and several other sstyles that he did not
name. His banjo playing spoke to the level of musical resources the five-string
banjo provided during the 1890s and earlky 1900s when Cannon (born 1883) learned
music before the guitar, the piano, and the pick played banjos had reduced the
role of the five string banjo, not only in traditional music, but in popular
music and Ragtime as well.

Cannon's access to a broad array of banjo techniques, included an adaptation of
the classic style of banjo playing suited for the Black dance band music he
played and to the Ragtime influence pop songs he performed and in the case of
Walk Right In write, As Cannon never claimed he invented this style of playing
but always talked of learning music from local Mississippi and Tennessee
musicians when he was young, and mentioned at least one Black banjoist he knew
who played banjo from sheet music, we can suggest that Cannon was not unqiue,
but a survivor from turn of the Century African American banjo who was lucky to
get recorded. The number of songs that he recorded that he said he learned
around 1900-1910 including songs we know were copyrighted and hits in Black show
business during these years, also speaks to this.

Cannon's blues playing tended to reflect folk and pop music Ragtime that he
played in his non-Blues songs or rather the syncopations and accent changing in
black folk dance music that inspired Ragtime in dialog with the Ragtime that was
the leading genre of music. While some think of Ragtime as only the classical
Ragtime piano music of composers like Joplin, Ragtime was a massive cultural
music even broader than Hip Hop, containing a variety of music approaches,
singing and instrumental styles, dress, dances, and reflections of Ragtime into
popular and folk music. While its commercial Heyday was between 1897 and around
1910, it was still a major influence in popular and folk music. Much of what is
classified as Blues is actually Ragtime.

The Ragtime influenced Blues and perhaps earlier Blues Cannon produced were in
contrast to the type of Blues younger musicians including those who passed
through his band were making, reflecting the divisions Paul Oliver explains
between Songsters born in the 1880s who grew up with a wider variety of music
and those born in the late 1890s and afterwards who became Blues artists
primarily with much less of the other repertoire. It is also reflected in the
differences in Cannon's band between his initial recordings with the great
Ashley Thompson on vocals and guitar, and his later recordings when he replace
Thompson born in 1897 first with Elijah Avery born in either 1880 or 1886 and
then with Cannon's closesst musical collaborator Hosea Woods who was born in
1884.

Another contrast is between the Jug Stompers' recordings and the
rrecordings that Harmonica Genius Noah Lewis made with Sleepy John Estes in the
middle of the last Jug Stompers Victor Sessions. One can contrast the version of
Minglewood Blues recorded by the Stompers with the version recorded by Thompson,
the New Minglewood Blues. New Minglewood is probably the version that the
Grateful Dead and Doc Watson covered. Lewis's own recordings sound much more in
the genre of Mississippi Delta, Arkansas and West Tennessee Blues, and have lest
of the songster ragtime of the Jug Stomper Recordings on which lewis played lead
harmonica.

Despite these differences, it is pretty clear that the Blues were a big
part of the reprtoire of Both Cannon, Smith, and Woods as well as Thompson and
Lewis. While Cannon and Woods were the only ones to record pop Ragtime and
popular songs in the band, the majority of of each of their recordings for the
Jug Stompers were Blues. Moreover, when the two recorded for Brunswick records
as "The Beale Street Boys," both of their recordings were equisite Blues with
close combination of leads between guitar and banjo, more intricate Blues than
anything recorded by the Jug Stompers. This and Cannon's testimony that he
learned Blues from Clarksdale slide guitarist Alec Lee in 1900 or a little
before speak to the Blues already being part of the repertoire of Black country
musicians in Mississippi at the turn of the century.

Examining Gus Cannon has also illustrated the limitations of the view of
Black banjo playing we gain from the last generation of banjoists who persisted
in the Upper South in the second half of the twentieth century. All of these
banjoists were observed AFTER dancing to their music had stopped being a living
practice in their communities. All of these banjoists continued to play
five-string banjo in a period when Blues and music derived from it had already
become ascendant among African Americans. With the possible exception of Lucius
Smith, none of these banjoists were in the Cotton South which was the center of
Black population and cultural change in the late 19th and early 20th Century.
None of these banjoists lived in a world where a variety of different banjo
styles were present in both popular and traditional music.

Cannon, on the other hand played music that he had learned when the banjo
was the ascendant stringed instrument in popular and folk music and played about
five or six different banjo styles and possessed a repertoire of old time tunes,
Blues, Rags, and popular songs. He never claimed to have invented any style on
the banjo but spoke to having learned banjo playing from a number of banjoists
in Mississippi when he was in his teens and early twenties. While Cannon spent
his first twelves years in the Mississippi Hill country, he learned the banjo in
the country areas around Clarksdale Mississippi, and later developed his music
while working and sharecropping in Cotton growing areas of Arkansas, Tennessee,
Missouri, and even cropped near Cairo Illinois before settling down in Memphis
in 1918.

One other point needs to be made. Cannon's recordings show that he made
full use of the steel stringed banjo and t5he new banjo architecture that arose
in the late 19th Century for gut and fiber strung banjos that allowed banjos to
be strung with steel strings years later. Much of the technique that he used
would not have worked with the gut string banjos he learned banjo on. Indeed,
his slide version of "Poor Boy" which he learned in 1900 or just before probably
was learned on the guitar, an instrument cannon also played, since a steel
string banjos that such beautiful slide as he played on that number cannot be
excuted on gut or fiber strings.

We need to do more research on when the shift to steel strings took place
in popularly available banjos like the Washburn from the sears Catalog Cannon
began playing in the late 1890s and early 1900s.


Comments?