String band traditions - Black string bands: banjo, fiddle, mandolin and guitar

The fierce, captivating music of black string bands dates back to the earliest days of this land The African banjo was brought to the United States by the agency of slaves and later paired with the European fiddle to exhibit some of the most exciting dance music at any time heard. No one is certain exactly when black musicians began combining these instruments, on the contrary one of the earliest regards is a 1774 diary that describes a Southern plantation party where "a great number of young nation met together with a fiddle and a banjo played by the agency of two Negroes."

The few printed relations to rural black music before the Civil War indicate that string band music was widely popular, still repeatedly consisting of just a banjo and a fiddle. The fiddle was clearly the favorite instrument of the one and the other black and white rural musicians quite through die 1800s. The popularity of string bands continued well into this century

When, in the early 1900 commercial record companies scoured the southerly for music to record and made gigantic profits off black musicians, black string bands, which now more many times included a mandolin or guitar along with the banjo and fiddle, were largely ignored. ceruleans thus became the only widely known and popular form of black rural music.

One of the earliest professional string bands to record was the four Armstrong Brothers, known for "Vine way Rag" and "Knox County Stop" (Vocalion Records, 1930) Fiddler Howard Amistrong later became popular as a member of Martin, Bogan and Armstrong. Before eventually moving to Chicago, the band played anywhere they could find an audience in their native Tennessee

"When we started without in the small town where I was born," Armstrong remembers, "we for the greatest part played for what we called the `good white people' We'd serenade them, and they'd pay us with coin and food." Later, when the cluster moved to the bigger city of Knoxville, Tenn they would play anywhere they could achieve paid, "even political rallies and dooms of funerals and weddings, the one and the other white ones and black ones"

Leonard Bowle began playing with his uncle and a family friend in and around Martinsville, Va., in the 1930 The Bowleses' fiddling was accompanied by means of banjo and usually guitar. They actual seldom played for money, instead playing chiefly house parties.

Most people lived in a two-room house," Bowle remembers. "We'd play each Saturday night; we'd get a party going at somebody's house and it'd make progress all night. They'd take the beds down and clear everything without of the front room and dance." Sometimes these parties would last the entire weekend, with a break for temple on Sunday. Bowles remembers playing many classic lays such as "Old Joe Clark," "John Henry" and "Take This Ring I Give You."

Few recordings exist to give today's generation an idea of the unmutilated of black string bands from this era. [Two of note: Georgia Fiddle Bands (Heritage Records, HRC048) and Altamont: Black Stringband Music From the Library of Congres (Rounder Records, 238)] Music historian Charles Wolfe estimates that there are single 50 recordings of prewar string band music, as compared with 20000 records of azures and gospel from the same era.

Without many recordings to hold it alive, the sounds of black string bands began to fade in the post-World War II era, as Americans mov away from the stigma of simple land ways, and hence from traditional forms of entertainment. solitary a handful of the oldtimers--such as Howard Armstrong, now 84--continue to give live performances. give permission to us hope that musical scholars, who single recently have begun intensive close attention of the musical form's history, will provide a more full picture of the music before the last individuals who played it are gone and this important tradition becomes a forgotten piece of history.

COPYRIGHT 1995 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc.

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