In the late
1990s/early 2000s I began collecting British banjos.
Unfortunately,
since those years for me were way before I dove into the shallow end of the pool
insofar as modern digital photography was concerned, no worthwhile photos of
that collection survive.
I selected
British banjos as my collecting focus for very basic economic reasons: they
were cheaper, fewer, and far less interesting (at the time) to the majority of
American banjo collectors, meaning that I had a virtually clear and open field
uncluttered by the high rollers who dominated the American vintage banjo market
during my ten or so years of active collecting.
Most American
collectors did not know British banjos, and did not place any collecting value
on them. British collectors did know
these instruments, but few considered them worthy of attention. A perfect example of this is the attitude
evinced by A.P. Sharpe in his circa-1960s pamphlet, A Complete Guide to the Instruments of the Banjo Family, (London:
Clifford Essex Music Company, Ltd., no date):
Monstrosities
that have lain hidden in attics or junk shops for many years are being
unearthed, dusted off and abortive attempts made to make them playable. Many of these old attic discoveries and junk
shop “finds” are virtually useless as musical instruments. Most are the crude large and deep hoop
tack-tead “tubs” of the minstrel era whilst some are even six and seven-string
unfretted instruments over eighty years old that were never intended for
anything more ambitious than an elementary vamping accompaniment to a “coon
song.” Neither are worth spending money
on.
Such minstrel
era “monstrosities” have long been extremely big-ticket items for American
collectors. I suspect that during the
last 20 or so years they have become equally important to British collectors.
There was a
period of time during the late 1990s and early 2000s when eBay was still
relatively new and modest in size and scope, that this online site offered a treasure
trove of attic finds, heirlooms and other banjo interests – before the
proliferation of eBay “stores” selling modern inventory crowded out the small
time hunters and gatherers. I
accumulated a very decent number of British originals as the result of fishing
expeditions on eBay. And more than that,
I developed a keen interest in British banjo history, and wrote and published
my fair share of studies of the subject, including the first comprehensive
profile of Joseph Daniels.[1]
My favorite
British banjo was one built by Samuel Wells Kemp who described his 1884
invention as an attempt to “construct or arrange a trumpet or bell concentrator
of sound at and within the belly portion of a banjo so as to modulate, soften
or mellow the musical tones as the strings are acted upon.” Kemp, who worked for the Middlesex Musical
Instrument Manufacturing Company, acted through a Fleet Street agent to
register his “specification,” number 9439, 26 June 1884. He was credited by A.P. Sharpe as the first
to patent a banjo. The Kemp banjo had
one of those oddly configured pegheads, the kind that have the power to cross
the eyes of even the most jaded of American banjo experts.
The 11-inch
pot was bent oak, designed to accommodate 18 diving helmet shoes that were sufficiently
eccentric so as to defy efforts to track down matches for the six that were
missing. Nice large dome headed screws
secured the shoes. The south end of the
neck bore two decals, one of Queen Victoria overlapping an insignia of the 1885
International Inventors Exhibition. The
neck was wide enough to accommodate six strings (31/16th inches)
with a nice “V” shape down the center, from the peghead to the fifth string
tuner. I have seen one other Kemp in a
collection displayed on the website www.Banjoworld.
The first
thing that caught my eye about the Temlett in my collection was the sculptured
shape of the rolled brass rim with the built-in bell and donut ring. Many of the British innovations were
motivated by the desire to elegantly conceal hardware. Temlett’s role in developing the zither banjo
gave him plenty of opportunity to experiment with solutions to exposed hooks
and nuts. On my Temlett, the hook ends
and nuts were fitted comfortable into a cove in the interior of the bell. The Temlett in my little arsenal was
distinguished by a significant number of geometric inlays on the fingerboard
composed of various combinations of diamond shapes. These may have been added later; my sense is
that British inlay work was generally simple and sparse. The most striking dimension of this Temlett
was the dramatic layering of neck and fingerboard wood, mahogany on maple on
ebony on maple, just under the thin ebony fingerboard. But what captivated me most about the
layering was the intricate manner in which the neck and peghead layers were
joined. In some ways it was just a
simple butt joint but it was accomplished in a way that lined up the seams
nicely. Unfortunately, the layering
contributed over time to the bowing of the neck.
I also had a
banjo by Thomas Hewett, whose London-based Stainer Manufacturing Company
consisted of himself, his wife, and his daughter who managed a “banjo team”
that was available to play music for home concerts, banquets and other events. My Stainer banjo consisted of an all-metal
rim the bottom half of which was a flange type bezel, a tension hoop built into
the rear end of the rim. The tension
hoop itself had thin, square top brackets through which 29 tension hooks were
threaded to provide the force necessary to attached the stretched skin. The 29 hooks were configured in an array of
14 on each side of the line bisecting the head, with the 29th seated
between the two metal arms that formed the tailpiece. Hewett held a patent for all-metal tuning
pegs with built-in locks that were truly unique. Of all the banjos with metal rims, this one
was the sweetest sounding.
I had two
banjos that could be attributed to Harry Spratt, and one that may have been
made for him by a musical instrument dealer.
Two were marked, and one bore the decal marking it as a banjo
manufactured expressly for the Roylance Company. Both of the signed banjos had the same
distinguishing feature on the back of the neck: a graceful curve that reached
its height around the fifth or sixth fret.
George Wunderlich called this a backward ogee. My older banjo dated to the 1870s when,
according to Sharpe, Spratt was making deep pots of heavy wood and fitting them
to wide and unfretted necks. My second
Spratt banjo, the “bedpan” banjo as it came to be called by my American
collector friends, was his 1885 patent for “a new way of arranging the
tightening hoop and screws doing away with the brackets,” and “a new method of
fixing the handle to the body whereby the vibration of the latter are impaired.”
Finally, I
had two “Defiance” banjos by Joseph Daniels in my collection. Daniels, born Joseph Toledano, was a
professional musician and member of a well-known family troupe. In 1887 he took out a patent for a metal
“sound pan” and a tailpiece distinguished by its adjustable hinge and tension
spring mechanism (number 14,162, 18 October 1887). I owned one of these as well as an all-wood
version of the top tension patent model, purchased from Richard Evans, a lovely
British gentleman collector. I
eventually sold the earlier wooden banjo to Jody Stecher.
During my ten
or so years of flirtation with collecting, and my associated interest in
research concerning British banjo history, I had some intriguing
encounters.
Ø
In
early 2002, a Ms. Christine Emmerson posted a website query about Henry J.
Spratt, “Professor of the Banjo,” who lived in Lambeth in the 1880s and may
have had some connection to a museum in the area. Spratt was Christine’s Great, Great
Granddaughter. She told me that Spratt
was born in 1836 in Saint Pancras, North London. He married Agnes Geal in 1861 in Huntington
at St. Mary’s, and had nine children between 1862 and 1890. He disowned his daughter when she married out
of the faith. Spratt taught music through
at least 1901.
Ø
In
2005 I made the acquaintance of Angela Heiss, the grand daughter of Alfred
Daniels, Joseph’s son. Alfred, the
youngest son, was born in 1884 and christened David Alfred, and went on to
perform in a minstrel troupe. The Heiss family
preserved sheet music composed by Joseph Daniels for the banjo, and had a
handwritten notebook of Alfred’s in which the performer meticulously recorded
his playlist. Some years later I was
contacted by yet another distant member of the Daniels clan who had produced
birth records and contributed to a privately published family history.
Ø
In
late 2005 I corresponded with Alan Middleton who edited A.P. Sharpe’s “The
Banjo Story,” and had in his procession (at that time) the original carbon
copies generated by Sharpe. I also
conducted email exchanges with Pat Doyle, who started the publication “The
Banjo,” which serialized Sharpe’s “Banjo Story” on the basis of Middleton’s
carbon copies. I met and exchanged ideas
and material with Lowell Schreyer, who obtained the original Sharpe manuscript
from Mr. McNagton, possibly at the point when Clifford Essex Company was
finally going out of business in the later 1970s. Julian Vincent, the editor of “The Banjoists’
Broadsheet,” published some of my articles.
Ø
During
my efforts to write about A.P. Sharpe, I corresponded with Clem Vickery, a
former stock boy employed by Clifford Essex, who recalled Sharpe from direct
experience. Vickery went on to resurrect
the name of Clifford Essex, publish some new instrument tutors, design and
build a line of C.E. banjos, market a variety of C.E. publications – including
the famed C.E. house magazine, Banjo-Mandolin-Guitar.
So in some
ways, as I immersed myself in British banjos, I found myself awash in a sea of
charming British collectors, luthiers, musicians – all of whom contributed
something significant to my flirtation with their musical and instrumental
history.
For example:
In 2003/2004,
probably as the result of a combination of my activities with the Banjo
Collectors Gathering and my auctions (and purchasing efforts) on eBay, I met
up, electronically, with the British banjo collector Richard Evans who, for me,
personified the eccentric trajectory of both British and American collectors in
general. Richard told me that in the
Spring of 2002 he watched the film “Hi-Fi,” and later looked to see what vinyl
records were fetching on eBay. On a
lark, he looked at musical instrument auctions.
Some years
before he had wanted an alto sax to hang on a wall in his home in England to
give expression to his love for swing music and traditional jazz. Richard purchased a tenor sax, and this led
to the acquisition of other brass instruments, but before long he realized that
displaying these on his walls would become a challenge. He already had a long necked Framus that had
languished in the big family house for 30 years, and then migrated to the
cellar of his modest cottage. He dug it
out, held it against the wall, and discovered that stringed instruments were
indisputably easier to mount on walls.
With no
particular notion of what he was doing -- by his own admission -- Richard began
buying banjos, engaging luthiers to do restoration work, and creating
friendships with other like-minded obsessive compulsives that helped him narrow
his focus and refine his ability to spot unique items. Richard described his collection as
consisting of an outrageous number of “nothing in particular” banjos. At some point, before he passed away in
October 2014, just a few days short of his 71st birthday, Richard
had turned his attention to collecting bowling league shirts and bowling
shoes. See http://www.banjohangout.org/topic/292623
* * *
Sometime
between late 2005 and the end of 2006 I began disaggregating the British
collection. I recall one evening having
the feeling sweep over me that as nice as these banjos were, and as unique as
they were, sitting on their racks in my basement banjo room they were little
more than large pieces of costume jewelry.[2] Some barely tuned to a playable scale. Others failed to hold a tuning at all. Many of the necks were warped by time and
playing them required serious work-arounds or massive neck repairs - not the
approach I took to collecting and resurrecting vintage banjos.
[1] See "Joseph
Daniels: British Banjo Maker, Minstrel Performer -- A 19th Century
Musical Family’s History," Old Time Herald, April 2007 (http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-10/10-12/joseph-daniels.html).
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