Word: banjo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...vellum drumhead with a fretted neck attached, string it with four or five strings, and pluck. Such an instrument worked for U.S. Negroes in the days of slavery, and its name may be derived from bandore or pandura (a lutelike musical device of North Africa). It is called the banjo...
Last week the National Association of Music Merchants was holding its convention in Chicago's Palmer House and talking about the banjo boom. "In the second quarter of this year we doubled the banjo sales of the first quarter," said Ted McCarty, president of Gibson Inc. Said Fred Gretsch Jr., president of the Fred Gretsch Mfg. Co.: "The guitar players in New York have had to get banjos to play the popular tunes. They've cleaned out the pawnshops. They've cleaned out the stores. They've cleaned out the attics. Now they're ready...
Heads Must Be Hard. The banjo died with an era in 1929, and the sweet and versatile guitar took over and stayed with the youngsters, who never knew what real banjo beat was. During World War II, manufacturers were not allowed to make banjos; afterwards they did not bother...
Then, in 1948, Bandleader Art Mooney used a banjo in a recording of the 1927 hit, I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover ("that I overlooked before"), and the tune was picked up as Senator Robert A. Taft's presidential campaign song. In 1954 came the Ames Brothers' record of Man with the Banjo, followed by Hey, Mr. Banjo and Banjo's Back in Town...
...something called C collaboration). Out of the newest culture of all comes Inside Jazz Down Under, with Graeme Bell and his jazz band, and the style is pure Old New Orleans. The Aussies make it sound as if they had just invented it, jigging two beat, grunting tuba, jangling banjo...