Pete's banjo style is interesting and innovative. This group is for to Pete's music: style, teaching, concerts, & discography

100 Members, Created 1/28/2014 -

Administrators: raharris (owner)

Updating Pete’s banjo book

From phdm on 12/30/2018 3:34:02 PM

47 years ago I began my banjo learning, starting, as have many, with Pete’s “How to Play the 5-String Banjo”. Over the years, I have continued to learn a great deal from Pete’s seminal banjo book.  Periodically I go back to it and discover things I have overlooked all these years later.  

Recently I agreed to give some very beginning banjo lessons to a 75 year old who is well versed in the repertoire of Pete and the Folk Revival.  He has, however, no exposure to playing any instrument or reading music. Starting with Pete’s “basic strum” on pages 6-7 of his book, I noticed just a few days ago that Pete chose a song, “The Union Way” as the first song in his book to play, illustrating tablature and musical notation for the first part of this song.   What I have now realized is Pete’s choice of that song as the first to learn is, at least today, so outdated and unknown as to be largely useless. No one knows this song theses days and I couldn’t even the student with this unknown song.  In fact I had to do a great deal of research just to locate a printed copy of “The Union Way”.  I had never hear of it, I could find no YouTube version (it may never have been recorded), and only belatedly discovered that possibly the only source for a printed version was in a classic late 1940’s lefty songbook Pete had a hand in “The People’s Song Book”, first published in 1948, the same year Pete wrote his banjo book. Fortunately I own a copy of that book.  (Turns out the melody is to the 1869 song “Little Brown Jug”, which I vaguely know.) I doubt the song was every known beyond Pete’s circle of activist folk singers even then.  And now, it is an inaccessible song, therefore not well suited to use today to teach tab and his basic strum.  

So for my student, I took a stab a recreating what Pete shows on the bottom of page 7 of his book, but illustrated by my tabbing out a simplified version of “Skip to My Lou”.  That song remains widely known even today. 

If anyone would want me to send a scan of the tab of the first, simplified version of “Skip to My Lou” to replace the bottom third of Pete’s book, page 7, I would be happy to send it along. (Pete’s later tab for “Skip to My Lou” on page 12 is slightly more complex and is to be learned by students who have mastered page 7 and are later adding the thumb to complete the “basic strum”.)

2 Comments
	finnslr says: 12/31/2018 11:30:10 AM I have a copy of all the how to play books and a copy of the mimieograph one. The Beaty is that they were Pete! The songs are true folk songs. My Dad new every verse to Little Brown Jug, and still does! Get a copy of Rise up Singing nd you’ll find all the verse there along with thousands of others. Chordie.com is also a great source for songs and cords. Learn the old ones and you’ll find that Pete knew good Banjo songs!
	phdm says: 12/31/2018 3:14:32 PM Yes – Pete did know them all. But occasionally, updates are important so that his knowledge can be passed on to the next generation. I too have a collection of each edition of Pete’s banjo book, with a partial xerox copy of the first, mimeographed edition. I would love to get my hands on a photo copy of the complete first edition. I keep hoping one would show up on eBay, but in the five years I have been monitoring it, no first editions have appeared.
Post a Comment
You must be logged in and a member of this group to post a comment.

Page: 1  2  3  4  Last