Banjo music: great American art

Posted on by sawnutz

I didn’t plan on this blog being a series of book reports, but given my current situation and my long commute by train, I have much more time to read than I do shoptime or time to play the banjo.  Dislocating my shoulder earlier this week didn’t help any either. So I read books about woodworking and music and lots of history, especially early American history up through the Civil War.  

I recently finished Lawrence Levine’s 1988 book, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.  Levine describes the rise of “high culture” in America in the 19th century and the separation of “art” from “popular entertainment.” 

During the second half of the 19th century, wealthy Americans who desired for America to be more like Europe began to push for a view of art and music as something that was supposed to spiritually elevate, and not entertain.  In an 1867 Atlantic Monthly article entitled “A Plea for Culture,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson argued that America needed to focus on the higher arts rather than the useful arts: “carpentry and upholstery, good as a beginning, are despicable as an ending.”  He continues, “American literature is not yet copious, American scholarship not profound, American society not highly intellectual, and the American style of execution, in all high arts, are hasty and superficial . . . Our brains as yet lie chiefly in our machine-shops.”  This particular quote gets my goat on several levels.  As someone who researches 19th century woodworking tool manufacturers, I must confess that I am glad that Americans were devoting their brainpower to inventions and manufacturing during this time.  This was an absolute golden era of invention and manufacturing and I cherish the tools I own from this period.  It will never be matched. 

But I also believe that Higginson is completely overlooking great American art that was probably all around him, but because it didn’t fit his European notion of proper art and music it was viewed as inferior.  Levine quotes a 1918 New Orleans Times-Picayune article describing a hierarchy of music:

“Down in the basement, a kind of servants’ hall of rhythm.  It is there that we hear the hum of the Indian dance, the throb of the Oriental tambourines and kettledrums, the clatter of the clogs, the click of Slavic heels, the thumpty-tumpty of the negro banjo….” 

How sad that something like that could be written in New Orleans in 1918.  People would kill to be able to go back to New Orleans in 1918 and hear the music that was in the air at that time!

For my purposes, I am glad that the author mentions the banjo, as the history of the banjo was deliberately rewritten in order to meet the rising highbrow tastes of the late 19th century.  People like S. S. Stewart loved the banjo, but felt that good old American banjo music was not good enough for the banjo.  What the world needed was classical music played on the banjo.  Stewart wanted to deny the banjo’s true history–that it was brought by slaves to America and the earliest banjo music was African, not European.  But that didn’t help sell banjos to middle-class and wealthy Americans who were taking up the banjo.  I believe that there are people who to this day do not know that the banjo was originally an African instrument due to people like Stewart who deliberately tried to hide this fact. 

The funny thing is that the community of people who play classical music on the banjo is tiny, while there is now a huge resurgence in old-time music and learning about the early history of the banjo.  People like myself are building banjos the way they were built in the early 19th century and are trying to rediscover the earliest banjo music.  People around the world (including many Europeans) are learning to play American old time music.  Too bad so many of our elitist forefathers couldn’t see the world-class art that was right under their noses.

I guess the next book I should read is Karen Linn’s That Half-Barbaric Twang: The Banjo in American Popular Culture which studies the history of American views of the banjo.

Dance, Boatman, Dance

Posted on by sawnutz

This has got to be my favorite song at the moment.  It is also known as “De Boatmen’s Dance” and is credited to Dan Emmett and is from the 1830s or 1840s.  The boatmen in question are most likely flatboatmen from the Ohio river.  I didn’t know much about them, so I read Michael Allen’s 1990 book, Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse, which I highly recommend.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

Chorus: Hi row, de boatmen row,
Floating down de river de O-hi-o.

1
De boatmen dance, de boatmen sing,
de boatmen up to ebry ting,
An when de boat men gets on shore,
he spends his cash and works for more,
     Den dance de boatman dance,
     O dance de boatman dance,
     O dance all night till broad daylight,
     an go home wid de gals in de morning.

(CHORUS)

2
De oyster boat should keep to de shore,
De fishin smack should venture more,
De schooner sails before de wind,
De steamboat leaves a streak behind.
     Den dance de boatman dance, etc.

(CHORUS)

3
I went on board de odder day
To see what de boatman had to say;
Dar I let my passion loose
An dey cram me in de callaboose.
     Den dance de boatman dance, etc.

(CHORUS)

4
I’ve come dis time, I’ll come no more,
Let me loose I’ll go on shore;
For dey whole hoss, and dey a bully crew
Wid a hoosier mate as captin too.
     Den dance de boatman dance, etc.

(CHORUS)

5
When you go to de boatman’s ball,
Dance wid my wife, or don’t dance at all;
Sky blue jacket an tarpaulin hat,
Look out my boys for de nine tail cat.
     Den dance de boatman dance, etc.

(CHORUS)

6
De boatman is a thrifty man,
Dars none can do as de boatman can;
I neber see a putty gal in my life
But dat she was a boatman’s wife.
     Den dance de boatman dance, etc.

(CHORUS)

7
When de boatman blows his horn,
Look out old man your hog is gone;
He cotch my sheep, he cotch my shoat,
Den put ’em in a bag an toat ’em to de boat.
     Den dance de boatman dance, etc.

(CHORUS)

I highly recommend Dan Gellert’s version on his album Waitin’ on the Break of Day.

As I learned from Allen’s book, these flatboatmen were heavy drinkin, fightin’, wild frontiersmen of the old west.  Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were the “Northwest” for much of this time and traveling down the Ohio, then to the Mississippi down to New Orleans was a wild frontier adventure.  Before the Louisiana Purchase, the final destination, New Orleans, was foreign territory.  But there was money to be made during the farming down time in the winter by taking your produce and pork and traveling down the river on a flatboat you built yourself and selling it in New Orleans.  Of course, you then had to WALK home, but you had some good money in your pocket, if you didn’t spend it all on women, whiskey, and gambling. It was not until the steamboat era that people had an easy way to get back home.

I decided to learn to play this tune on my banjo.  A version appears in the 1855 Brigg’s Banjo Instructor, which you can find here.  I can’t really read standard notation, but I am able to translate into banjo tabs, and here is the one that I created for myself.  You can download it here.

I’ve been playing it for about a week now and I pretty much have it down.

Now, if you know me at all, you have already guessed that the other idea I have in mind is to build my own flatboat using traditional methods and tools. I learned that a lot of these boats were built in Pittsburgh, where I lived for many years.  I would love to go back to Pittsburgh and launch a flatboat there at the start of the Ohio and travel all the way down to New Orleans.  Not gonna happen any time soon, but a man’s gotta dream!  Just add it to my list of crazy ideas.

There is a guy in Gallatin, TN–John Cooper–who is making reproduction flatboats.  Abraham Lincoln took two flatboat trips from Indiana and Illinois in his youth, and Cooper helped built the flatboat used to recreate and commemorate his trip.  He also helped a group of nuns make a flatboat journey from Louisville to Maple Mount, KY to recreate an 1874 flatboat journey that sisters from their order took to go down river to create a new school. If a group of nuns can do it, so can I!

So the next step is to investigate how these flatboats were built.  I have read that they were made from green oak planks and pinned with wooden pins and caulked with pitch or tar.  I think I’ll start with a one-man model and try it out.

The raising: A song for federal mechanics

Posted on by sawnutz

Come muster, my lads, your mechanical tools.
Your saws and your axes, your hammers and rules:
Bring your mallets and planes, your level and line,
And plenty of pins of American pine;
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     A government firm, and our citizens free.

Come, up with the plates, lay them firm on the wall,
Like the people at large, they’re the ground-work of all
Examine them well, and see that they’re sound;
Let no rotten part in our building be found;
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     Our government firm, and our citizens free

Now hand up the girders, lay each in its place
Between them the joints must divide all the space;
Like assembly-men, these should lie level along,
Like girders, our senate prove loyal and strong:
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     A government firm, over citizens free.

The rafters now frame–your king-posts and braces,
And drive your pins home, to keep all in their places;
Let wisdom and strength in the fabric combine,
And your pins be all made of American pine;
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     A government firm, over citizens free.

Our king-posts are judges–how upright they stand,
Supporting the braces, the laws of the land!
The laws of the land, which divide right from wrong,
And strengthen the weak, by weak’ning the strong;
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     Laws equal and just, for a people that’s free.

Up! up with the rafters–each frame is a state!
How nobly they rise! their span, too, how great!
From the north to the south, o’er the whole they extend,
And rest on the walls, while the walls they defend!
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     Combined in strength, yet as citizens free.

Now enter the purlins, and drive your pins through,
And see that your joints are drawn home, and all true;
The purlins will bind all the rafters together,
The strength of the whole shall defy wind and weather:
     For our roof we will raise, and our song still shall be–
     United as states, but as citizens free.

Come raise up the turret–our glory and pride–
In the centre it stands, o’er the whole to preside;
The sons of Columbia shall view with delight
It’s pillars, and arches, and towering height;
     Our roof is now rais’d, and our song still shall be–
     A federal head, o’er a people still free.

Huzza! my brave boys, our work is complete,
The world shall admire Columbia’s fair seat;
It’s strength against tempests and time shall be proof,
And thousands shall come to dwell under our ROOF.
     Whilst we drain the deep bowl, our toast still shall be–
     Our government firm, and our citizens free.

                      –Francis Hopkinson, July 4, 1788
                        (published in The American Museum)

Hopkinson wrote this poem in honor of the Grand Federal Procession in Philadelphia on July 4, 1788, a celebration of the new American Constitution. I don’t know about you, but Hopkinson’s poem makes me want to spend my weekend honoring those great Americans who created this nation by doing some timberframing!

Laura Rigal, in her 1996 article entitled “‘Raising the Roof’: Authors, Spectators and Artisans in the Grand Federal Procession of 1788”  in Theatre Journal,  gives a detailed description of the procession (she is quoting from published accounts from a magazine called “The American Museum”):

“Organized into “companies” or “corps,” and making up the Procession’s largest contingent, Philadelphia’s artisans wore the costumes and carried the emblems, flags, and implements of their respective trades: journeymen and apprentice ropemakers walked behind their masters with “spinning clouts” in hand and “hemp around their waist.” Coach painters carried “pallettes and pencils” while the house, ship, and sign painters held “gilded brushes” and “gold hammers” and followed a standard bearing: “three shields in a field azure: crest, a hand holding a brush, proper”: the motto, “Virtue alone is true nobility.” Bricklayers marched with trowels, “plumrules,” and a flag representing “the Federal city rising” beneath a rising sun: its motto, “both buildings and rulers are the works of our hands.”

In the course of the three-hour parade, the larger or more heavily capitalized industries performed the procedures of their respective crafts on rolling platforms, or stages, drawn by horses past the huge crowd which lined the streets, perched “on fences, scaffolds, and roofs of houses.” The sail-makers made sails on a stage “representing the inside view of a sail-loft with masters and men at work, “while the boatbuilders built a boat thirteen feet long, “which was . . . nearly completed during the procession.” On a stage representing a miniature coachmakers’ shop (169 x 89 x 99), “a master-workman” performed his tasks alongside “a body and carriage-maker, a wheelwright, a trimmer, and a harness-maker . . . and a painter ornamenting a body.” Three hundred cordwainers marched six abreast, “each wearing a white leather apron, embellished with the company’s arms . . . above, the arms, [St.] CRISPIN, holding a laurel branch in his right hand, and a scroll of parchment in his left.” They followed a “carriage drawn by four horses, representing a cordwainer’s shop, in which six men were actually at work . . . the shop hung round with shoes, boots, etc.”

One hundred journeymen and apprentice cabinet and chair makers, wearing “linen aprons and buck’s tails in their hats,” followed “a workshop on a carriage” whose wall bore the sign “federal cabinet and chair-shop”; their masters marched six abreast in front of the stage. The saddlemakers rode in a model saddler’s shop where “Mr. Stephen Burrows and a number of hands at work . . . complet[ed] a neat saddle during the procession.” A company of gunsmiths wearing “green baize aprons with green strings” accompanied a rolling platform bearing the sign “federal armory,” with a “number of hands thereon at work,” performing the production of military hardware. A model blacksmith’s shop followed as the peacetime counterpart to gunsmithing: more than two hundred “brother blacksmiths, whitesmiths and nailers” walked behind “a machine drawn by nine horses” which represented a “federal blacksmith, whitesmith, and nailer’s manufactory” with a “real chimney . . . furnished for use.” The motto on their standard read: “by hammer and hand, all arts do stand.” As Francis Hopkinson reports in his “Account of the Grand Federal Procession” this “manufactory was in full employ during the procession”: the “blacksmiths completed a set of plough-irons out of old swords, worked a sword into a sickle,” and “turned several horseshoes” while a whitesmith “finished a complete pair of plyers, a knife, and some machinery” and the nailers “finished and sold a considerable number of spikes, nails, and broadtacks.”

Now that is a parade!  I first came across this in 2001 and I have looked off and on for drawings of the procession from 1788.  It must have been a sight to behold.  New York had a similar procession on July 23, 1788 and a few images from that procession can be seen here: https://www.nyhistory.org/web/crossroads/gallery/celebrations/index.html

Here is the centerpiece of the New York Procession, the Federal Ship Hamilton:

Federal Ship Hamilton

Federal Ship Hamilton

 This page contains descriptions of the events in Boston on February 8, 1788:

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/ratification/digital/resource/supplements/mass.supp.0695.htm

 

To close, here’s another similar poem, supposedly written by Benjamin Franklin, also on the occasion of the Philadelphia Grand Federal Procession of 1788.  I like the Hopkinson one better, but this one isn’t too shabby.

YE merry Mechanics, come join in my song,
And let the brisk chorus go bounding along;
Though some may be poor, -and some rich there may be,
Yet all are contented, and happy, and free.

Ye Tailors! of ancient and noble renown,
Who clothe all the people in country or town,
Remember that Adam, your father and head,
The lord of the world, was a tailor by trade.

Ye Masons! who work in stone, mortar, and brick,
And lay the foundation deep, solid, and thick,
Though hard be your labour, yet lasting your fame;
Both Egypt and China your wonders proclaim.

Ye Smiths! who forge tools for all trades here below,
You have nothing to fear while you smite and you blow;
All things may you conquer, so happy your lot,
If you’re careful to strike while your iron is hot.

Ye Shoemakers! noble from ages long past,
Have defended your rights with your all to the last.
And Cobblers, all merry, not only stop holes,
But work night and day for the good of our soles,

Ye Cabinetmakers! brave workers in wood,
As you work for the ladies, your work must be good
And Joiners and Carpenters, far off and near,
Stick close to your trades, and you’ve nothing to fear

Ye Hatters! who oft with hands not very fair,
Fix hats on a block for a blockhead to wear;
Though charity covers a sin now and then,
You cover the heads and the sins of all men.

Ye, Coachmakers, must not by tax be controll’d,
But ship off your coaches, and fetch us home gold;
The roll of your coach made Copernicus reel,
And fancy the world to turn round like a wheel.

And Carders, and Spinners, and Weavers attend,
And take the advice of Poor Richard, your friend;
Stick close to your looms, your wheels, and your card,
And you never need fear of the times being hard.

Ye Printers! who give us our learning and news,
And impartially print for Turks, Christians, and Jews,
Let your favourite toasts ever bound in the streets,
The freedom of speech and a volume in sheets.

Ye Coopers! who rattle with drivers and adze,
A lecture each day upon hoops and on heads,
The famous old ballad of Love in a Tub,
You may sing to the tune of your rub a dub.

Ye Shipbuilders! Riggers! and Makers of sails!
Already the new constitution prevails!
And soon you shall see o’er the proud swelling tide,
The ships of Columbia triumphantly ride.

Each Tradesman turn out with his tools in his hand,
To cherish the arts and keep peace through the land:
Each ‘Prentice and Journeyman join in my song,
And let the brisk chorus go bounding along.

Self Reliance and Self Contradiction

Posted on by sawnutz

I was recently re-reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 esssay “Self Reliance,” and it occured to me that Emerson’s description of genius is the attitude of most bloggers:

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense  …  A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. … Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.” 

If Emerson were alive today, he would undoubtedly be a blogger, sharing his genius with us.

I can’t promise that there will be any genius in this blog.  I can pretty much promise right off the bat that there won’t be any.  But I’m not going to let that stop me.  I can promise a lot of self-contradiction.  For example, why is a self-professed Luddite writing a blog?  I am going to defer to the genius of Emerson again (how un-Emersonian!):

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”  That sounds like a plan to me!

Based on the name of this blog, you might think that I am going to be writing about food.  I might write about food a little bit.  I definitely think about food a lot.  But the name actually comes from a lithograph of the Five Points neighborhood in NYC in 1827.  Right in the center there is a grocery store and they are advertising “SOFT SHELL CLAMS” and “GOOD FAT HAMS.”  My first thought when I saw this was, that would be a great name for a banjo tune!  It also made me a little hungry.  But it is very evocative of the mixture of New England and Southern lifestyles that make me who I am.  I am likely to write about the things that I am always thinking about.  I have very lowbrow tastes (you will not find me writing about wine or the opera), but I am also a self-professed lowbrow snob (I like country music, but only really old country music and oldtime music; I love beer, but only really good beer; I love woodworking, but shun modern power tools and only work with antique hand tools).  But I gotta follow my genius and let others worry about the contradictions.  They don’t bother me.