Sometime
in early July 2014 I came across a compelling version of Wade Ward's Old Joe
Clark played by Stephen Wade.
Here's
Stephen's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Z9Bqq_Hug
Here's the cut
by Ward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzKbMLbLTd4
And here's a decent effort to break it down by Eli Smith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_-msE9jwQ8
Finally, here's my first effort to play the tune the way Ward does, done on 4 July:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJCGft5hOc
Not surprisingly, Stephen told me that my crack at the tune was hampered by my Diller-influenced right hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzKbMLbLTd4
And here's a decent effort to break it down by Eli Smith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_-msE9jwQ8
Finally, here's my first effort to play the tune the way Ward does, done on 4 July:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJCGft5hOc
Not surprisingly, Stephen told me that my crack at the tune was hampered by my Diller-influenced right hand.
As I confided in another friend, also a former Diller student, my right hand no longer seems capable of departing from the stuff Diller jammed into our brains. And while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (it does at least indicate there is something in my brain...), I'm not really capable of "getting" other styles.
This isn’t the first
time that someone has suggested my right hand was a political prisoner of the
West Virginian banjo player Dwight Diller.
Frankly, I’m happy to
be able to play anything that’s even remotely recognizable, so my “defaulting”
to Diller type music makes me happy.
But the suggestion
that there was another rhythmic attack out there in the form of Wade Ward’s
approach to tunes drove me to focus my attention on Ward’s playing, and then on
Roundpeak type banjoing.
Here’s
my second cut at the tune done on 7 July after fooling around with the tune for
a few days:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tTkp_rzTuw
I
tried to take Bob Carlin’s tab in the Carlin/Levenson book, Wade Ward:
Clawhammer Banjo Master, as a roadmap but ended up relying more on Eli
Smith’s video – especially the slowed down version he plays beginning at the
1:30 minute point in the video.
Stephen thought I had
come much closer with this one, especially on the signature part which is that
slide bit at the start of the song, but recommended that I avoid getting stuck
in my basic rhythmic beat, and focus on emulating Wade Ward's which would bring
me closer to his version of the tune.
Two weeks in to the
venture, I had still not cracked the Wade Ward code. I thought I detected a bit of a core pattern
in Eli Smith’s Old Joe Clark video,
so I resolved to watch more of Eli’s laying, and flood my room with Wade Ward
recordings.
However, I did find a way
into the Roundpeak rhythm. As Stephen
Wade and others made clear, Charlie Lowe and Round Peak playing had little to
do with Wade Ward’s approach to the banjo, so I ended up having two codes to
crack. As Bob Carlin noted in a forward
to his book, co-authored with Dan Levenson:
To
northern banjoists of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Wade Ward’s name was
synonymous with old time banjo playing.
If you wanted to learn the driving clawhammer style, you had to start
with Wade Ward. Before Tommy Jarrel,
Fred Cockerham, Kyle Creed and their Round Peak ilk became the old time music
gurus, “Uncle” Wade was the go-to-guy!
(p. 6)
(p. 6)
I did
manage to locate a video in which, at the 2:22 minute point, Jeremy Stephens
demonstrates Roundpeak playing, making reference to Tommy Jarrell:
Is this
double thumbing the key to the equation?
I’m not sure. Kevin Fore, a native of the Round Peak
area near Surrey County, North Carolina, and a noted banjo player and banjo
maker – and a close student of Kyle Creed’s playing, says this:
Round
Peak music is characterized by a distinctive interplay between the fiddle and
the banjo. The fiddle is often tuned differently to play in specific keys, and
often a short bowing style is used. Like the fiddle, the banjo is tuned
differently to play in particular keys, and most often a fretless banjo is
played. A fretless banjo is a banjo that does not have any frets. Most fretless
banjos were originally fretted banjos, but the players pulled out the frets
down to the seventh fret and placed a brass or copper plate from the nut to the
seventh fret. This gave the banjo players access to a greater number of notes
which enabled them to follow the fiddle player’s melody more precisely. Round
Peak banjo players also used a lot of slide notes, which produces a bluesy
sound. Also, Round Peak banjo players use the fifth string in place of noting
the first string at the fifth fret to produce that note. The role of the
guitar, mandolin and bass is basically for keeping rhythm while the banjo and
fiddle play the melody of the tunes. http://www.roundpeakbanjos.com/
Tom Collins breaks
the Round Peak banjo stroke down in this video:
Part 1:
The short version is
that this style:
Ø
Takes out the
brush stroke
Ø
Adds an
alternate string pull off, in this manner:
·
Down on the
second string
·
Pull off on
the first string
·
Down on the
first string
·
Thumb on the
fifth string
Two additional videos by Tom
Collins on this style:
Part 3:
I’m still wrestling
with these two alternative styles, trying to find a way into the rhythmic core
of these two very separate traditions, but Stephen’s honest, helpful
observations prompted me attempt to shift a bit out of my comfort zone.
As a result, I think
it is worth branching out. I invariably
end up coming back to the percussive right hand driven style that first
appealed to me when Bates Littlehales and Dwight Diller offered to teach me a
bit of clawhammer so many years ago.
But every once in a
while trying my hand at alternative approaches is enough to keep the brain
fresh, the fingers nimble, and the ears locked and loaded to try and find new
and interesting sounds.
Play hard,
Lew
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