In its continuing effort to make rare and previously unpublished banjo scores available, the ABF will include a special supplement in the next issue of The 5 Stringer, due out later this month. "Minstrel Maidens Medley" is by Joe Morley and features several minstrel-era melodies that refer to women in title or lyrics. Morley adeptly arranges and links the pieces with his characteristic flair.

The cover graphic, by yours truly, has a retro look, evoking the 1880's or so, when minstrel pieces such as these were still appearing in banjo methods, and when Morley likely learned them.

In addition to Morley, the ABF has issued special supplements of compositions by Oakley, Tarant Bailey Jr., John Sloan and others.

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Fantastic!  Can't wait!!!

The ABF has put out quite a number of supplements with well edited and previously unavailable music.  All beautifully printed with fine cover art.

Send in your measly $10 a year and join if you are not a member.  The library holding alone is worth 100x that price.

The 5 Stringer itself has become a relevant historical anthology of the banjo.  Reading back issues has let me follow recent history of the banjo and get a deeper understanding of the key people involved from the last 60+ years.  Not to mention a wealth of knowledge on technique and skills-- a bonus above and beyond the value of joining.  The issues also include interesting pieces to work on.  

Perhaps if there were more members we could all discuss the piece and put up videos/ recordings, then discuss.

Hi Joel

I think you will find this piece especially interesting, as it merges your long standing interest in the minstrel banjo era with your more recent enthusiasm for Morley.

Thanks for the kind words on the folio covers. They've been my effort in recent years.

Got my issue of "5-stringer" Tuesday. Took me a couple of evenings to key "Minstrel Maidens Medley" into the 'puter for a TAB version. I'll start playing thru it tonight.

Neat medley, not difficult and the melodies of the various tunes are nicely arranged. Nearly drove me crazy trying to get all the parts and their repeats sorted in TablEdit.

Well done Shawn!

Hi Marc

Glad to hear you like Morley's arrangements and that you were ultimately successful in guiding TablEdit through the tricky repeats.

Typesetting was by the ABF's Executive Secretary,  Paul Heilman.  His clever, yet TablEdit-frustrating use of the repeat symbols wherever possible was not his preference, but was done in order to fit the piece within the available two pages.

Morley arranged quite a bit of stuff...and was quite good at it. Almost as good as his own compositions.

Typesetting is an art in itself...and Paul did a great job. TablEdit uses a "reading list" to generate a map for each piece. You basically tell it to move thru the piece by measure number: 1 thru 16, 6 thru 32, etc, etc. The problem I often have is that it counts every measure, including pick-ups...which are often not counted in the original notation. In this case, the very first note is a 'pick up' and not counted in Paul's notation. I kept forgetting that and would get things off by that one measure (bangs head on table).

Ah well. It's done, no worries.

I've gotten old enough that I need larger font size...so the TAB prints out on 3 pages.

If anyone wants it, please let me know and I'll be happy to send it out privately. If you want the dots, please join the ABF, they'll be happy to send you a copy with your membership!

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