Photos Needed for this site...Anyone help please?

[thereallyniceman]

I want to 'update' the front end of the site to make it more inviting and look a little less like a sheet of A4.

 

Does anyone  have in their collections of banjo memorabilia any  decent quality photos of famous Classic Banjoists, past and present, that they could scan and email me?

 

I am not looking  for the same photographs that are seen all over the web, rather unseen poses of the great players. This is just something to make the site look a little different when built in to a composite for the page.  It is only an idea at the moment but it would be good to see if we could hold something unique!

 

If anyone could do a Hi-Resoultion scan and email me directly to:

thereallyniceman AT yahoo dot co dot uk          I would really appreciate it.

 

(I had to munge the email to stop spam.. but  I guess that you can work it out)

 

Ta

Ian

[Ray Jones]

Hi Ian

I have many hundreds of photos, not all in high resolution.

Do you mean something like this?

[thereallyniceman]

Is that you Ray?  You have been out in the sun too long :-)

I thought that you may be the man to help out and photos would be appreciated. Often scans of printed pictures can be grainy and have strobe effects, which me may have to put up with, but may be better from photographs as they scan better.

 

I think that the potential for upset (for those who are easily upset) of use "black face" pictures, if that is what this gentleman is, may be not QUITE suitable.

Those of the Greats, Van Eps, Ossman, Oakley, T Bailey Snr and Jnr, Morley, Parke Hunter , Grimshaw  and many  many more for the Classic Style.

My opinion of what constitutes Classic style is the parlour type playing and the cylinder recordings  from mid 1890- 1930s. Also modern players of the style. Doug Back etc etc. I think that prior to 1890 is a little early for our style.

 

I would be interested to hear the opinion of others on here.   Would anyone like to DEFINE Classic-Style for display on the site header??

Ian

[Jody Stecher]

What is A4? What is munge? What is wrong with the homepage as it is? I don't find it uninviting. I think if you (we) really want to attract the curious, then  photos of stiff looking men in uncomfortable suits and collars might not really be the best thing. But why would we want to attract lots and lots of people? Anytime a music genre gets popular it is always accompanied by (or sometimes caused by) a lowering of the quality of the music. The way a "niche music" gets popular is by the expunging of the characteristics that made it worthwhile in the first place. So if we want to make classic banjo popular the first thing that needs to be done is to add electric pickups to each banjo. Wah wah pedal is optional. Next we have to do away with all that old-fashioned outdated repertoire. Too many chords. Too many notes. We won't need real banjos when we can use digital samples instead. What I have just written is only a slight exaggeration of what really happens.  A concise definition of Classic Banjo is a good idea however. I'll work on it.

[Mike Moss]

Jody,

 

A4 is roughly like Letter size in the US; munge is like spamblock, to make an e-mail address invalid so spammers can't use it.

 

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that popularization is detrimental to quality... one of the big elements in the "downfall" of the classic banjo was, in my opinion, that it lacked its own "Andres Segovia" -- considering the banjo and the guitar were more or less on equal footing in the 19th century, but the guitar managed to get accepted as a concert instrument, whereas the banjo did not. As a result there are many more classical guitar virtuosi and trained performers than classical banjoists.

[Jody Stecher]

Classic Banjo was not a fringe/niche music at first. It was mainstream. I'm talking about musics at the periphery. What I'm talking about happened with bluegrass (now almost unrecognizable and now homogenized and made bland),   happened in the current ukulele craze (no one will perform without an amp and a  DI, preferably a really bad one, and the sound is unrecognizable as ukulele), is about to happen with old-time music which has gotten so dumbed-down it's almost palatable to the average consumer, happened long ago with trad jazz which only got a foothold in it Dixieland incarnation and which has happened in the last 30 years with blues which used to be individualistic and now is usually generic.

As for banjo's Segovia I have a few random thoughts. Segovia personified the public image of his instrument. He and his guitar were Spanish. The public image of the banjo was connected with black field hands, southern plantations, etc. Fred Van Eps and Vess Ossman before him were earlier than Segovia of course but their appearance was in discord with the public image what a banjo is and what a banjo player should look and be like. Later in the 20 the century another banjo virtuoso appeared who had tremendous success and whose persona, instrument, and the music he played were in accord with each other and with the public's image of the banjo at the time: Earl Scruggs.  I haven't thought this through and may be all wrong about this idea.

[marc dalmasso]

AMAZING &  STRANGE : i play on a " granada " banjo since 1996 and on my " Sierra " steel guitar since 1987 ; In 2003 , i married my 2nd wife , Spanish from .... Granada ; of course everybody knows that the mountain beside Granada , facing the Alhambra is the Sierra nevada . and MORE , the summer house of my stepfather  ( ? i am not sure of the word ) is beside the sea , in a small town called " La Herradura "

just click on this link to know more ...

http://www.almunecar.com/Visitors_Guide/Calendar/Segovia.html

[Mike Moss]

On Segovia; I wouldn't really say he personified the public image of his instrument. Whenever he performed, it was in a thoroughly classical setting, dressed like any classical musician would. -- in fact, I believe that he managed to give the guitar acceptancy precisely because he separated it from its "characteristic" roots -- the faux-gypsy flamenco operettes ("zarzuelas") which were very much like America's own minstrel shows in 19th and early 20th-century Spain.

 

In contrast, Earl Scruggs adopted a more "characteristic" look, with a Stetson and a string tie, which pretty much became the standard dress code for Bluegrass musicians. Likewise, despite efforts by the Soviet Union to make the balalaika a respectable concert instrument, the end of the regime has been accompanied by the disappearance of figures such as Pavel Necheporenko -- my all-time "balalaika hero" -- or Eveniy Blinov to give rise to comic figures such as Bibs Ekkel (a great musician, but who often dresses up in cod cossack clothes and performs comic Russian shows).

 

Segovia, rather than dressing like a "characteristic" Spanish guitarist, dressed like any classical pianist, violinist, or member of a symphonic orchestra would, elevating the guitar from a parlour and popular instrument to a concert instrument.

 

It's a pity that such greats as Fred Van Eps, Vess Ossman, Alfred Farland, or Joe Morley didn't manage that breakthrough...

[Ray Jones]

Now come along girls!!  Settle down.    The French will tell you that you can't make Omelettes without breaking eggs.    We can't have progress without change, but we don't want to bring back the lash, do we.

With Ian coming from Lancashire, I was thinking of George Formby as a heading, with his big toothy smile, and the caption.. " It's turned out nice again "   just to put all in the right mood. 

[Jody Stecher]

So Segovia's attire, identical in every way to the the attire of the classic banjoists mentioned, was responsible for the success of the guitar but the way of dress of Farland et al (identical to Segovia's) was responsible for the demise of the classic banjo. Interesting thesis.

[thereallyniceman]

Ray,

George Formby .....  that's perfect.  I will get my web designer working on it right away with his little stick of Blackpool Rock

 

:-)

 

[Jody Stecher]

The expression of dissenting opinion is itself the breaking of eggs. A functional format for the website is the omelette.



Ray Jones said:

Now come along girls!!  Settle down.    The French will tell you that you can't make Omelettes without breaking eggs.    We can't have progress without change, but we don't want to bring back the lash, do we.

With Ian coming from Lancashire, I was thinking of George Formby as a heading, with his big toothy smile, and the caption.. " It's turned out nice again "   just to put all in the right mood. 

[Mike Moss]

Jody,

[Quote] "So Segovia's attire, identical in every way to the the attire of the classic banjoists mentioned, was responsible for the success of the guitar but the way of dress of Farland et al (identical to Segovia's) was responsible for the demise of the classic banjo. Interesting thesis." [/quote]

You have misconstrued my statement, as that is not my thesis at all... it is simply a rebuttal of the following:

[quote] "Segovia personified the public image of his instrument. He and his guitar were Spanish. The public image of the banjo was connected with black field hands, southern plantations, etc. Fred Van Eps and Vess Ossman before him were earlier than Segovia of course but their appearance was in discord with the public image what a banjo is and what a banjo player should look and be like. Later in the 20 the century another banjo virtuoso appeared who had tremendous success and whose persona, instrument, and the music he played were in accord with each other and with the public's image of the banjo at the time: Earl Scruggs. I haven't thought this through and may be all wrong about this idea." [/quote] (Emphasis added)

In which you stated that the guitar's breakthrough was due to Segovia conforming to the popular image of the guitar. My statement was that the popular image of the guitar was not that of an elderly gentleman dressed in a tuxedo in an opera house until the guitar made its breakthrough. There was nothing particularly "Spanish" about Segovia and the image he projected any more than there was anything particularly "American" about Farland et. al., as you yourself stated in your later post.

My thesis is that the guitar got "lucky" at one point, but that both instruments were on a more or less equal footing until the guitar became "classical" in the 1920's.

 

EDIT: Ray, no eggs are being broken in the current debate, it's just a civil exchange of ideas :-)