Influences

When I was about 2 or 3, my folks decided to MOVE TO THE COUNTRY. Some of their friends had already moved, so they bought 7 acres about four miles from Bloomington, Indiana. The land was undeveloped and off a dirt road named Sare Road. Mr. Sare still lived another mile out the road on the right. He drove an old faded green Kaiser automobile and he kept his upper eyelids up with Band-Aids.

My mom had gone to Germany just after high school in about 1936. She bought a Hohner Accordion while there. When I was a kid, she sometimes played it just for fun. I liked hearing her play it, but when I was 12, she put it away never to play it again. She also had collected 78 rpm records and had a zillion classical records she played on a huge old record player. The music meant nothing to me, but I did grow up around classical stuff. Sometimes I surprise myself by whistling along with music that I have no conscious knowledge of.

I went to a ridge school, Phillips School. The school bus would stop at "Honey" Jones' Trading Post. Mr. Jones always called EVERYBODY "Honey", so that is how the place got the name. In the winter, it got really cold and Honey Jones had a wood burning stove. Anyone who was in danger of freezing to death could move into Jones Trading Post and stay by the stove. A fiddle, banjo, and guitar hung on the wall. I was vaguely aware of the music much like the classical stuff my mom played. It was there and it got in my system. My folks were not too impressed with this illiterate influence and tried in vain to guide me. I had a friend with a trombone, so they got me started on 4 or 5 years of trombone lessons. A young fellow named Joe Hickerson called one day. He was a student at Oberlin College and knew my uncle, Robert W. Tufts, who taught Economics there. Joe wanted to come to Bloomington and play his guitar at a coffee house. He needed a place to stay and my folks invited him to our house. Joe played really nice tunes and sang songs. I was about 10 years old. Most of the stuff at Jones' didn't have words and was faster music. It was all music… it was all good stuff. Playing the trombone was getting heavy. The melody was hard to find and the tunes weren't anywhere else but on the paper. I tried bassoon, trumpet, baritone horn…. None of them grabbed my attention for long.

I loved the creek that ran at the bottom of the hill below our house. Being an undiagnosed hyperactive kid, it was easier for my folks to let me go than try to restrain me. I could take off in the morning and go explore for the rest of the day. Who cared about mealtime - I was a kid. I found tire tracks in the creek beds and followed them up the draws to little cabins. I would nose around until finally someone would appear and I could look at them and try to figure out who they were. There weren't that many folks in the area, so most everyone was a relative or connected somehow. Quite often, the connection was string music. Granny Hughes was a faith healer and banjo player who lived a couple of miles down the creek beds from our place. She was from Kentucky and would play "Sicpad, Sicpad, Come and get your nubbin'" for me when I asked her to. She was related to Matt Walker, another banjo guy who lived farther out. He used to play "Eat the corn, chew the cob, just like a mother hog, a yella gal will kiss you in the morning soon" for me. I always liked visiting Matt because he was cross-eyed, and, as a kid, I never knew exactly which eye I was supposed to be looking at.

[More great tunes from the Matt Walker Hit Parade]

John, John, don't get drunk - go spend your money drinkin'.

Buy yourself a pair of socks and keep your feet from stinkin'.

[And]

Little boy, little boy, where'd you get your britches,

Papa cut 'em out and Mamma sewed the stitches.

He had wonderful names for tunes he played on the banjo. His style he called "knock-down" style. He said that he would take his banjo to the Bloomington bars on Friday night and the guys would knock him down and drag him outside. He said actually he played "knock-down-drag-out style." One tune which Matt had brought from Kentucky he called "Look over yonder and see the devil comin'", another he called "Hell's a-rollin' in the kitchen." He would sing words to these songs, but his Kentucky accent was impossible to understand. Mostly I remember his kindness; he would smile and I would leave a happy kid. But I was a little worried about his eyes.

There was another old guy - Mr. Campbell - who played a homemade 3-string dulcimer with a homemade fiddle bow. I heard him play a couple of times but dulcimer was one of those instruments that just didn't play a melody that moved me.

Every July 4th was the big Bloomington Parade. My bicycle would get decorated with streamers and everyone showed up. After the parade, the town fathers got up on a big wagon and played band music. It was nice, but not as interesting to a kid like me as the commotion at the other side of the town square. That noise always turned out to be John Kinney . He shouted words and beat his banjo to bits and he roared and hollered. I mostly remember him singing some song about "Molly and Tenbrooks" and some horse race. My folks definitely kept an eye on me and made sure I listened to the big wagon with the band playing on it.

There was an elderly couple who played cigarbox fiddle and cigarbox mandolin in Bloomington. They were blind and stood in front of the 5 & 10 cent store on the square. We saw them in the summers but they "went south" in the winters. I liked to listen to them, but our family always walked past them pretty fast. They played regular tunes as I recall. "Golden Slippers," and "Redwing" are the only two that I clearly remember. Their last name was McDaniels. (See page 16 of the CD booklet for a picture of Mr. McDaniels.)

In 1958 my dad's boss passed away, and by 1960 we pulled up stakes and moved to Baltimore County, to a wonderful farm of about 300 acres near the Lock Raven Reservoir. We were renters - not owners. I was 14. I carefully left all my musical instruments back in Bloomington. So far, nothing had really connected. I met a nearby neighbor my age, Howard Stinefelt. His dad played 1920s tenor banjo tunes, mandolin, and piano. At night, if I timed it right, Mr. Stinefelt would be plinking away at something, Nobody else in the family played along with him - it was a personal music that he loved. I enjoyed listening as Howard and I talked about important stuff like looking for arrowheads in the fields, or where we would go fishing after school the next day. Mr. Stinefelt was a garage-tinkerer. I got a lot of inspiration and a solid foundation from him at this time. He MADE the aluminum boat and MADE the electric motor which Howard used on Loch Raven Reservoir.

My true inspiration came in tenth grade. I went into the boys' bathroom to discover Wilbur Miller doing a handstand over the boys urinal while playing Marching Through Georgia on the harmonica. That was the absolute moment that I knew that somewhere, somehow I was a musician. All the tunes from my youth were in my head waiting to come out. If a kid could play a tune while doing a handstand over a urinal, SURELY there was music out there somewhere for me.

When Wilbur came down from his perch and collected the spare change from the spectators in the boys room, I found out that he lived just over the hill from where I lived. He invited me over, and I soon bought a harmonica. It didn't play any music for me, so Wilbur took me to his neighbor to show me the 1929 MG car in the garage. There was a beat-up old 5-string banjo hanging on the wall of the garage. Mr. Ted Lissauer was the man's name, and he wanted $50 for that banjo. I was making $5 for a ten-hour day on the farm, but I wanted that banjo. By the end of the summer in 1963 I owned it. The head was ripped and it was a lightweight "Thompson & Odell" banjo, but I thought I could hear those tunes inside it even then.

Joe Hickerson, the guy who came to Bloomington when I was a kid, was living in the Washington, D.C. area by this time. He would come visit and bring his guitar. When I was a senior in high school, Joe brought a banjo player with him, Pat Dunford. Pat was from Indiana and played a couple of tunes. We tried to make my banjo playable, but it needed a new skin head. I found a music store and they put a skin head on my banjo. I had a driver's license, so once the banjo worked, I began looking for guys who could play. At about this time I drove out to Bloomington to visit my sister. She had gone back to attend college there. She introduced me to Charlie Cox, a fellow who played knock-down style banjo.  He took the time to show me how to play the banjo with the back of a finger rather than picking up like you do on the guitar. We went out together looking for some of the guys I had listened to as a kid. This time I wanted to LEARN the tunes, not just watch and listen.

I started Indiana University in the fall of 1964. Charlie was the guy who got me started correctly. I pretty much took off like a rocket after I got the basics. There were so many guys that I wanted to find that I had lost touch with while we were in Maryland from 1960 to 1964. I found Matt Walker again, and Granny Hughes. Boyd Mosier, Homer Spriggs, Charlie Fleener, Merle Pefley, and the blind couple who were still on the square in front of the 5 & 10. I thought I was pretty hot stuff on the banjo and then one day I went into the cafeteria and there was Peter Hoover. I had never seen anyone play "double thumb" style banjo. It sounded like an entire orchestra. He was playing a Vega Tu-ba-phone banjo. I was used to Sears banjos and calfskin heads. I could not even talk; the sound totally overwhelmed me. I remember sitting down and staring. He was playing "June Apple" and playing a complete F chord. I had never heard a banjo make such a beautiful sound. Nor did I know at this time that the banjo player who had inspired Peter Hoover years before this was a camp counselor named … Joe Hickerson.

Indiana University had a folksong club. It was probably started by this same Joe Hickerson. They brought in unknown musicians for concerts. I went to as many as I could, but most of my time was spent looking up the old guys from my past, or trying to figure out how to get my thumb to go over and play all the orchestral notes that Peter Hoover played. Pete Steele, Doc Watson, Lightning Hopkins, Rev. Gary Davis, … these folks came and played concerts. I got to know Pete Steele and he invited me to come visit him in Hamilton, Ohio. I went over four times. He would call when he came to Bloomington to visit a banjo player, Paul Pell. Pete said to me "Everybody has a natural instrument… it's just finding out which one is yours."

I was getting better at banjo and worse at college. Charlie and I drove to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to visit relatives of his. While there, we went to the Siler City Fiddlers Convention. We both played. But the one banjo prize went to "Chick" Martin. Chick lay on his pack while he played some nondescript tune on the banjo - all the while dragging himself around on the stage by his heels. He claimed that when he was a kid, they called this "the possum dance". It reminded me of Wilbur playing the harmonica. It didn't seem like a whole lot of music, but it did win a prize. Chick came up to me after the contest, slapped me on the shoulder, and said "Don't feel bad, son, that is my 184th consecutive blue ribbon."

Indiana University did not give credits for banjo, so in the spring of 1965, I moved back to my folks' house in Baltimore County. (While I was in college they moved from the farm and bought a house in Phoenix, Maryland.) I worked the factory circuit and looked for older banjo guys the rest of the daylight hours. Mr. MacCartha lived a mile or two from my folks. I learned Cacklin' Hen and Cluck Old Hen from Mr. MacCartha. He was a central Virginia fiddler and banjo player. I met H.D. Hill who ran a store in Gorsuch Mills, Maryland. He was an old time finger style picker. Toney Welch lived in Everett, Pennsylvania. He played finger style tunes that he had learned back in the 1930s. I went to the fiddlers "picnics" in the area between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Tracy Schwarz (fiddler for the New Lost City Ramblers) was living in Glen Rock, PA, and could be found at these events.

There was a coffee house called "Patches 15 below" which was in Timonium, Maryland. They brought folk musicians and local musicians in on weekends. I never had any money, so I would mostly hang out in the parking lot. I did get to hear the Beers Family there. Martha Beers played some simple old time banjo tunes and I watched her intently and tried to play the same tunes.

By December of 1965 I knew that I was going nowhere. I was working in a machine shop about 80 hours a week and my folks were not happy with me. In January of 1966, I had a falling out with my boss at work; packed my banjo, and headed off to find the only person I knew who I felt would understand my love of music, and give me a roof to sleep under while I tried to sort myself out… Joe Hickerson. Being the dope that I am, it never occurred to me to PHONE first, so I just got in my car and started driving south. I picked the day of all days to drive…it was snowing heavily. By the time I reached Washington, D.C., about 10 inches of snow had fallen. My little 1957 VW was the ONLY car not stuck. When I got to the center of the city, I went to a phone booth and tried to look up his phone number. I only knew he lived in the city. The fact was, he lived in Maryland, so he was not listed in the Washington, D.C. directory. While I was standing there in the phone booth, sleeping bag in one hand, banjo in the other, a stranger walked up and said "Do you play the banjo?… Do you need a place to stay?…. Follow me…." His name was Andy Wallace. He led me to a house in a community called Kensington. The house we went to belonged to two of the founders of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington, Solomon and Helen Schneyer. It was the great snowstorm of January, 1966. About eight other folk music enthusiasts had been stranded by the snowstorm and had headed for the Schneyer household. There were red Indian Rugs hanging on the walls and on the floors.

There were also guitars and banjos on the walls. The house was built in 1885 and seemed to ramble on endlessly. A special wing had been added just for gatherings such as this one. It had a fireplace at one end, and a rectangular "square" grand Steinway piano.

Up to this time I had not felt comfortable at other families' homes. My folks expected me to be home before suppertime, and no houses I had ever been in had rugs on the floors and on the walls. No one in my family tree ever wore eye shadow or had their hair made blonde. This was my first day away from home without anybody planning my schedule. I was 19, had never had even a date, and life was exciting. The snow storm dumped 24 inches of snow over the next two days. We would walk to the Safeway store for groceries and sit and play music all day and all night. Andy showed me how to raise the second string and lower the fourth string on the banjo. Suddenly, all the tunes which Peter Hoover had played in the fall of 1964 came back into my head. He had been tuned in this tuning. Once the banjo was in "double c tuning" all the tunes were waiting for me to play them, I just had to do it. By the time the4-day party was over and we left to go our different ways, I was truly a banjo player. I had figured out the basic left hand patterns in the C tuning and my repertoire had doubled. Thank you, Joe, for not being in the phone book. Thank you, Andy, for pointing me in the right direction on the banjo, and thank you, the Schneyer family, for bringing me from the life I had known to the life that was there waiting.

I went back to my folks' house and tried to fit into a normal mold. The music and the people I had met in the snowstorm had changed me forever. I no longer could be the person my folks wanted. Mrs. Schneyer called and asked if I wanted to go with her to pick up some people called the Georgia Sea Island Singers and chauffeur them to the Georgia State Folk Festival near Cleveland, Georgia. I had never been around any African Americans before, except when they had the dunkings in the creek below our house when I was a kid. It was just what I needed. Doc Boggs and John Jackson were at the festival. I was on Cloud Nine.

After I got home a week later, we decided I had better go back out to Bloomington and try college again. I no sooner got out there than I met a fellow named Dan Gellert. He was walking across campus carrying a guitar and we started talking. Dan and I became good friends. He was already a fantastic musician. I watched and listened. He had the musical soul far beyond anyone I had been close to. Joe Greene is the greatest bluegrass fiddler I ever heard. Dan is the best old time fiddler I ever heard. Musical soul.

I got my start as a banjo player from listening to the older folks who lived in the country around where I grew up. I got my first physical banjo demonstration from Charlie Cox. He got me started with a solid right hand. I got my technical Ph.D. from meeting Peter Hoover and sitting five feet from him one night while he played the smoothest clawhammer tunes anyone had played (1965). I got my drive and soul straightened out by hanging out and idolizing Dan Gellert in 1967.

In the fall of 1967, I left of college and went to live with my sister in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The Appalachian Volunteers paid me $25 a week to walk up creekbeds and look for good old time musicians. It was a great experience. Walking up creekbeds and meeting strangers was just like being a kid again. One guy said "If you can play Cumberland Gap on my fretless banjo, I'll give it to you." I thanked him for the banjo, a month later played Cumberland Gap at the Bristol, Tennessee, Fiddlers Convention and won $25 for third place. Not bad, considering Frank George won fifth. Nobody ever said banjo contests were fair.

I did a lot of playing from 1967 on… I moved back to the Washington, D.C. area. There were lots of square dances to play , and every Monday night in Bethesda, at a restaurant called The Red Fox, Michael Holmes ran an "Open Mike." Folks dropped by and played the gamut of folk music. One guy might play solo bluegrass fiddle and the next act might be imitating the Kingston Trio. One night, a fellow named Howie Bursen came in. He lived in Ithaca, New York, but was visiting friends in the area and stopped by. Howie was the next level up from where I was on the banjo. Maybe he was on the roof and I was in the basement. In any event, when he started playing, there were only a few players listening who were good enough to even understand HOW good he was. WOWEE…did that guy play the banjo. So back to the woodshed I went, trying to imitate this guy who played so effortlessly. It has been many years since I first met Howie. I still am dumbfounded by some of the things he is able to play.

And Ken Perlman has come into my musical life. Another wonderful musician. Once he stayed at my house. I awoke in the morning to the sound of Ken playing clawhammer scales. Not just in the first position. Oh no - all the way up the neck. Not just for a couple of minutes - oh no - it lasted for half an hour. I told Ken that if he ever recorded just the scales he practices, it would sell - I know I would buy a copy.

And then I went to the Maryland Banjo Academy and met two more great inspirations: Michael J. Miles playing classical clawhammer, and LeRoy Troy, demonstrating how many revolutions the banjo can make without ever losing the tune. I just listened to Mac Benford's "Kentucky Favorites" cassette. Another Classic.

So many wonderful banjo inspirations.