Vance Lowry and the classic banjo?

[RitonMousquetaire]

Hello everybody,

While searching for banjo records on a french radio website I stumbled upon this emission broadcasted in 2013, in which you can listen to two banjo records (which I find really enjoyable), played by Vance Lowry around 1926 : http://www.francemusique.fr/emission/le-fabuleux-monde-des-archives...

While listening to the first one (it starts at 11'53, following a few explanations by the person who curated the program) I thought he was playing a 4-string banjo (wether plectrum or tenor I'm not sure - there are some moments where it also sounds a bit like a 5-string, but I don't know the subject well enough to be sure), but the second (which starts around 12'30) seems to be a 5 string banjo played in the classic way (which would maybe explain that title, "l'harpo-banjo", which can be translated as "the harp-banjo" I think).

I'm quite curious about this player; does anybody knows exactly what kind of banjo he's playing in each of these records? Were his arrangements ever published? Do you have more informations about his life and other pieces or records? There are some informations on his life in France in the programme (where he apparently knew the poet Jean Cocteau), and somebody called Tony Thomas posted some interesting informations on this youtube video in which Lowry's playing can also be heard : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKXzR8a-_DE

Just in case he wouldn't be playing classic banjo and that discussion would be irrelevant to the present website, here is an other broadcast from the same website which features several classic banjo records (and this time I'm sure of it :) ) : http://www.francemusique.fr/emission/le-fabuleux-monde-des-archives...

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Just to correct an error.  I had been told by a friend about the origins of the remaining Clef Club in Philiadelphia and thought the organization had continued there.   It did not.  in the 1990s a group of African American leaders of one branch of the AFM, the US musicians union, felt that problems of discrimination with other locals of the union in the area and with employers were not being properly address.  They formed this as a special organizations that could take actions and stands beyond those that their branch of the union could properly take, and took the name of the Clef Club in honor of the previous historical organization to honor it.  This organization still exists in Philiadelphia.                                    

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Going through the whole thing the first time.

You write "the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, "   This is not clear even in 1926.  Most of the  work Lowry did from at least 1911 until around 1923 or 4 was either as a soloist, but most often in ensembles without horns but with drums a piano, often a bass and sometimes a cello or cello banch, no horn, although he also played the bass saxophone and the alto saxophone and perhaps the clarinet.   Lowry's main work we know about was in bands origined in NYC that were associated with the Clef Club of which he was a prominent member.  The main aim of the organization was to get employment for African American musicians in venues frequented by and the private places and resorts of New York and Philiadelphia's ruling rich such as the Wanamkers and Vanderbilts in particular.    Performing in these palatial homes (I once went to a wedding on Park Avenue in NYC in the 1990s where a friend married a daughter of a family who are attorneys for Citi bank where the entire wedding with 250 guests was held in the apartment's "living room"  and the reception-dinner was held in the dinning room) it was considered inappropriate for Black musicians to play horns.  This also meshed with the previous practice that the Organization fought that in such places Black musicians were expected to act as wait servants and cleaners when not performing which itself meshed with the situation that many performers began as wait staff or cleaners who would  play instruments in their spare mnoments or after their shifts for tips.

The Clef Club acted more like a union hiring hall, sending out bands and trios who met their standards of dress and deportment and jmusicianship to these customers and it focused on musicians and ensembles playing lighter easier to play string instruments, especially banjos.  They favored a variety of mandolin descended banjos including a number of different types no longer extant.   Lowry's main group was formed by Louis Mitchell around 1911 variously called the Beaux  Art, Southern Symphony,  Clef Club, and Ciro Club quintet (although there were often up to 8 members) or Orchestra.  The linuep was a piano, drums, two bandolins or bandolin and five string or tenor or tango banjo, with a bass similar to one of the pictures one of the group members found and posted here.  Later he belonged to a similar outfit called the 7 Spades going from England and landing in france.  That outfit morphed into Louis Mitchels Jazz kings which had no horns.  Lowry left that band and started a collaborationist with french or Belgian pianist Jean Weiner where the only horn involved was when Lowry played alto sax instead of the banjo.  There were a mad number of permutations fo this across the 1920s.  However,  I do not know Lowry playing in a band with horns except mention of himself playing bass saxophone with Jean Sawyer's Persian Room Orchestra (LOL yet aother variant of that one group with changing names mentioned above)  and his alto playing in France of Lowry's  musical context including horns.  All these bands did include drums and the organizer and prime figure in these bands over this perod was trap drummer Louis Mitchell.

Jody Stecher said:

There is a fair amount of information about Vance Lowry on the internet and several photos and photocopies of memorabilia. So far, I have found no photos of his banjo. But given the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, I think plectrum banjo is more likely than fingers. 

for instance

https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/3316370898/

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

These organizations were called and seen in publicity as "Jazz" , but if you listen to this recording, made fairly late in the 1920s,  I dont think they had much Jazz content.  This is more the kind of advanced rag time that banjo kings like Van Epps or Ossmnan played than  Jazz.   Banjo ensembles were really part of the late ragtime feelll.  It seems this remained popular in Europe,  particularly England after it faded from popularity in the US.   This was accentuated especially in the UK because when    the ODJB toured England, their original banjoist did not make the trip and banjos were not identified with "real jazz: as much as they became in the US                                                                                                On another project--one that eventually led to this over 10 years--Eli Kaufman told me he believed that on  different cylinder recordings  of some tunes,  he believes Van Epps used a plectrum and others of the same tune he used a finger style.  

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

I have seen pictures of him holding what must be a five-string banjo, pictures of him particularly in the 1930s with a tenor banjo, and pictures of him playing either a four-string mandolin banjo or a banjolin.  Curiously I cannot find a picture of him playing either Bass sax or alto jax.  LOL he was also a juggler throughout his career, and I cannot find pictures of him juggling

Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist said:

Going through the whole thing the first time.

You write "the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, "   This is not clear even in 1926.  Most of the  work Lowry did from at least 1911 until around 1923 or 4 was either as a soloist, but most often in ensembles without horns but with drums a piano, often a bass and sometimes a cello or cello banch, no horn, although he also played the bass saxophone and the alto saxophone and perhaps the clarinet.   Lowry's main work we know about was in bands origined in NYC that were associated with the Clef Club of which he was a prominent member.  The main aim of the organization was to get employment for African American musicians in venues frequented by and the private places and resorts of New York and Philiadelphia's ruling rich such as the Wanamkers and Vanderbilts in particular.    Performing in these palatial homes (I once went to a wedding on Park Avenue in NYC in the 1990s where a friend married a daughter of a family who are attorneys for Citi bank where the entire wedding with 250 guests was held in the apartment's "living room"  and the reception-dinner was held in the dinning room) it was considered inappropriate for Black musicians to play horns.  This also meshed with the previous practice that the Organization fought that in such places Black musicians were expected to act as wait servants and cleaners when not performing which itself meshed with the situation that many performers began as wait staff or cleaners who would  play instruments in their spare mnoments or after their shifts for tips.

The Clef Club acted more like a union hiring hall, sending out bands and trios who met their standards of dress and deportment and jmusicianship to these customers and it focused on musicians and ensembles playing lighter easier to play string instruments, especially banjos.  They favored a variety of mandolin descended banjos including a number of different types no longer extant.   Lowry's main group was formed by Louis Mitchell around 1911 variously called the Beaux  Art, Southern Symphony,  Clef Club, and Ciro Club quintet (although there were often up to 8 members) or Orchestra.  The linuep was a piano, drums, two bandolins or bandolin and five string or tenor or tango banjo, with a bass similar to one of the pictures one of the group members found and posted here.  Later he belonged to a similar outfit called the 7 Spades going from England and landing in france.  That outfit morphed into Louis Mitchels Jazz kings which had no horns.  Lowry left that band and started a collaborationist with french or Belgian pianist Jean Weiner where the only horn involved was when Lowry played alto sax instead of the banjo.  There were a mad number of permutations fo this across the 1920s.  However,  I do not know Lowry playing in a band with horns except mention of himself playing bass saxophone with Jean Sawyer's Persian Room Orchestra (LOL yet aother variant of that one group with changing names mentioned above)  and his alto playing in France of Lowry's  musical context including horns.  All these bands did include drums and the organizer and prime figure in these bands over this perod was trap drummer Louis Mitchell.

Jody Stecher said:

There is a fair amount of information about Vance Lowry on the internet and several photos and photocopies of memorabilia. So far, I have found no photos of his banjo. But given the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, I think plectrum banjo is more likely than fingers. 

for instance

https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/3316370898/

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

My late judgment after finally figuring out how to record the selections from the french web site after years,  is not as astitute as those offered here.  Lowry began playing banjo as a child or teenager.  I have a newspaper article from 1906 of his playing in the streets of Topeka Kansas for tips with his father playing guitar to accompany him and the newspaper hailing him as a  prodigy although he was 15 years old.  He was a professional show business banjo performer at least by 1910 but probably 1909 touring with a vaudeville act led by "Kid Brown."  making United Time, refering to the main national vaudeville organization.   Already notices and articles on--where performers are-- in Black newspapers like the New York Age and the Indianapolis Freemen whose show business coverage was followed nationally,  refer to Lowry's engagements or moves from on act to another as if the reader is expected to know who he was.

    He was certainly a performing banjoist before the tenor banjo became standardized or before it became popular.  At least reading lots of black newspapers over the years from this period. you dont hear a lot about mandolin banjos and tenor banjos until around 1910-12.    When I studied Jazz guitar, I was taught to play certain tunes holding the plectrum with thumb and index finger and doing finger rolls with my  remaining fingers.  However, as I detail in my article on Gus Cannon, this really only works on slow tunes,  I think my teacher taught me Nat Cole"s  "Christmas Song"  that way, or at least struggle to teach me, LOL.

One notice  I read yesterday from a British newspaper review of the Ciro Club band after Lowry joined it in 1916 speak of an unidentified banjoist's  amazing play with thumb and fore finger.

LOL  since in other cases even the great and fairly decisively opinionated ELI KAUFMAN the GReat has said there are some recordings he cannot tell are plectrum or guitar-banjo style,  I  leave it for great minds than mine,.   '

Lowry played a variety of banjos five string back when there were only five strings,  four string mandolin banjo, bandolins, and tenor banjos with both plectrum and finger style.  

I think it is close.

Trapdoor2 said:

I would agree with Joel (and Ian)...although I cannot hear a second banjo.

In the photograph of Lowry, compare his right hand with that of the banjolin player. The banjolin player is obviously holding a plectrum between his thumb and forefinger, his index and middle fingers are split exactly as expected since he's anchored to the head with his remaining fingers. Lowery's thumb is advanced further out, in textbook classic fingerstyle position. Awkward to hold a plectrum this way (although I've seen it done).

In looking closely a the banjo (Weaver or Essex, I dunno), The tension hoop where the strings pass over is reflective and appears to have 5 lines (reflections of strings). I don't know if this model has a relief cut out for the strings at the heel of the neck...if it does, that top string reflection might be the top of the cut-out.

Tony, I'm looking forward to hearing your presentation in November. I'll be there!

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Because this photograph shows Lowry playing a five string banjo with four strings,  it does not mean that in the recording made years later by my judgment  he was playing a five string banjo without the fifth string.  The photo looks like it was taken probably 1916 or 17 when Lowry was performing with the Ciro Club band in London,.The pianist appears to be Dan Kildare who killed himself in 1919 or 1920  

  IDboth recordings were made in 1929, NOT 1926, as the French radio web site says.  I have jpgs of the 78s!  He played in a lot of contexts and appears to have played  the 5 string banjo with or without a fifth string, mando banjos of various derivations including bandolins and tenors and four-string mandolin banjos (know after Lowry played them as melody banjos) and certainly played tenors and bandolins with plectrums

Joel Hooks said:

My opinion on the recordings (which you can hear by following the link to a podcast in the original post) is that the first piece is a duet with a "fingerstyle banjo" and a plectrum banjo.  With headphones I can hear two distinct voices.  The second piece is pure fingerstyle banjo complete with rasps or drum slides, the old drumming on the head trick (difficult to do with a plectrum) and chord tremolo at the end (finger waggle tremolo has a very different timbre from plectrum playing).

I can't rule out the possibility that he is finger picking on four strings (like Frank Lawes did) but that is unlikely.  The fifth string makes position jumps seamless and efficient.  His playing is very lively and polished.  I don't see why he would handicap himself by removing the 5th string.

The "metallic" sound of the 4th string could be due to him over playing it causing it to buzz.  He is picking the heck out of those strings with a very strong attack.  The strings will often not only buzz against the frets but the fourth can buzz against the 5th string on a fortissimo bass solo.

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Lowry lived in Paris along with other members of the former Ciros band awaiting transportation to Russia for an engagement in Petrograd that was timed to start in November 1917 which was cancelled by the revolution.  Lowry Remained in France until some time in the 1930s, although he made frequent trips to entertain and record in London, and seems to have gotten gigs in Sweden and Denmark as well.  Besides the 5 string Banjo Lowry played the alto saxophone.,   In Paris in the 20s he was associated with some of the surrealist engagements in Jazz including some recordings and film made by Jean Cocteau and even did some jamming in a surrealist hangout in Paris with Igor Stravinsky sitting in on drums!!!

Lowry made several recordings in both London and Paris in the late 1920s on the banjo.  He seems to have been using a 1920s classic banjo without the fifth string attached or not using the fifth string,   When WWII approached he moved to England and thence was repatriated to the USA.  There are some notices for his performances in the USA during WWII at fund raising events for the war effort, where he appears to have been more of a  comedian than a musician.  Interestingly enough, the notices of his vaudeville performances from the 40s describe him as a finger stye banjoist rather than a plectrum player,   I had thought Lowry went over to the dark side and played either a tenor or plectrum, but I have been convinced that continued to play finger style.,

Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist said:

I think the teaming up with Stinson was at the most one engagement at the Family Theater in Allegheny Pa, then an independent town, but within months to be incorporated into Pittsburgh.  It was where Stinson lived and entertained on the banjo, and was  local political ward healer and barber.   Stinson seemed to have regular appearances at this theater when he was not touring, and it seemed to be more oepn to African American performers than other theaters in the Pittsburgh area.  After Stinson died Lowry moves to NYC if he was not already living there and joins a set of Clef Club associated ensembles led by Louis Mitchell and then Dan Kildare before leaving the US for England in 1916 thence to France in November 1917 where he remained resident until 1939 

Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist said:

A bit busy being drawn back into the minstrel period and into efforts to characterize the whole place of minstrelsy in 19th century society,  LOL,  distracted me.  But  I have an interest in Lowry which brought me here though I am always wanting to help HIS NICENESS.

It certainly looks like a five string banjo, but I see no sign of a fifth string being on the banjo.  In that era plectrum and tenor players often used a five-string without the fifth string

Before I was pulled into the antebellum period by OUP I was developing an interest in Lowry and some of his Ciro club peers precisely as a link between the age of five-string guitar banjo playing and the tenor banjoists of the jazz age which he may be.  Unfortunately,  I am still immersed in trying to figure out where T.D, Rice was between August 1830 and May 1831, LOL.

In the Black newspapers of the first decade of the 20th century,  Lowry is frequently described as a comedian and banjoist, something that seemed to be standard as this is the way earlier newspapers also described James Bland before he too went to the soggy island.  Lowry's notices as a banjoist come from a period BEFORE tenor banjoists existed or at least before tenors were formally marketed in 1910.

Very interestingly enough in late 1910 and 1911 notices appeared that he was working up an act with C.P.  Stinson.  Stinson appears in Converse's memoirs as the first Black player allowed to participate in a banjo contest in the 1880s, and who famously won such a contest in Kansas City.  Stinson performed in the US and Europe in minstrel troops and as a banjo soloist.  He returned to Pittsburgh where it was headline news in the national Black press that the major white music store in Pittsburgh hired him as a banjo instructor.  For a time, at least one report says, Stinson was making banjos in Pittsburgh, but he eventually became more of an actor, and then a theater manager.  However, more pertinent to this research is that he definitely was a guitar banjo player.

Teaming up with Lowry probably would have been a duo but probably with jokes, and maybe singing.

Unfortunately,  Stinson died before the new show business season could start and never toured with Lowry,

Lowry was among the New York musicians associated with the Clef Club led initially by James Reese Europe.  The Clef Club had annual concerts to raise funds for formal music education for African American youth in New York.  At several of these concerts Lowry is listed as a banjo soloist.  Europe considered all stringed instruments to be African American particularly the banjo, and for these concerts he assembled orchestras that scores of banjos (and often as many as ten pianos as he considered that a stringed instrument too!).

However, Europe was one of the pioneers of the pick played banjos, the four string mandolin/violin played banjos.  Europe  was foremost an arranger who would often be pulled in to black Broadway or touring shows to rearrange the band and the singing, and had formal compositional skills.  He said he liked the various mandolin-descended banjos because he could score them like the violin or the viola or the cello.  His own dfance band the Europe Society Orchestra with about 10 pieces had 5 banjos, but only two pianos.

Lowry also played the Clarinet, and stayed in Europe until the Second World War.  He recorded with both tenor and clarinet.  He appeared in one avante-guard movive in the 1920s in France, playing, not the banjo but the clarinet.  He apparently lived in France during the interwar years (we show our age when to us the War was still WWII and not the ones that seemed to be permanently starting and stopping over the past 20 years).

I wish  I could do more but right now  I am kneed deep in other work, but keep in touch as I eventually aim to write about Lowry.

He seems to have died in the late 1940s, although continued to perform as a solo act after his return to the US and I found some notices for War bond and similar benefits from the WWII years.  A couple years ago I was briefly in contact with a relative of Lowry's through Ancestry.com,.

Probably if this had come up in 2012, I would have richer memories  about Lowry.  But he certainly is a candidate for someone who started as a five-string classic player who graduated to being a tenor player.Some day I will return to him.  LOL

I
 
thereallyniceman said:

Thank you RitonM ,

That is very interesting and Mr. Lowry certainly is/was a great player. It sure sounds like Classic Style to me, but I agree that many of his arpeggioed chords sound like he is using a plectrum.  The triplets, finger tremolo and Bass notes clinch it for me though... Classic Style !!

Here is a music player so that you we don't have to hunt for the track:

VANCE LOWRY on www.francemusique.fr Classic Banjo

By the way Tony Thomas is a site member on here, but we have not seen him for a while. Tony helped edit the site page  "WHAT IS CLASSIC BANJO?"

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Jody I had long thought that Lowry switched to Plectrum or even the tenor but recent work and clippings  that I have found suggest he remained a finger style player until his death.   He does seem to have abandoned the fifth string as there are pictures of him holding  5 string banjos without a fifth string,   Descriptions of his playing when he returned to the USA in the 1940s describe his as "plucking" the banjo  or playing with his finger.  Some of the descriptions of his playing with horn bands are due to the fact that Lowry also played the alto-sax and appears to have played more alto sax in his involvement with Paris jazz orchestras and recordings he made with Jean Cocteau in the 20s,

Nice seeing you on stage in Berkeley last year.  I should be coming out for some mentoring on Black music history next (2023) year

Jody Stecher said:

There is a fair amount of information about Vance Lowry on the internet and several photos and photocopies of memorabilia. So far, I have found no photos of his banjo. But given the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, I think plectrum banjo is more likely than fingers. 

for instance

https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/3316370898/

[Jody Stecher]

Hi Tony,

... and sorry I missed you in Berkeley. Kate and I were  Covid-Cautious and remain so.  New topic:  Have you turned up any "new" information about the Bohee Brothers?. I've been fascinated with their story ever since realizing that they were Canadians.  I know they performed and spent time in the USA before relocating to the UK but they seem to have started their musical lives in Canada. That suggests that there was a banjo culture in NE Canada way back then, and it seems possible it was a black music culture. The  little bit I've been able to find out about them turns more than one assumption on its head. For instance for thimble style they used banjos with a metal clad rim. FIngerstyle was expected to be soft and dulcet whereas thimble style was made as raucous as possible. With metal thimbles on a metal clad banjo (but apparently not on metal strings) they made a different sound from the all-wood rim banjos they used for finger up-picking. What a contrast to 21st century bluegrass pickers using pick and incorporating noise (in a good way) in their playing and clawhammer players stuffing their banjo pots with diapers and teddy bears to keep the sound round and subdued. 

Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist said:

Jody I had long thought that Lowry switched to Plectrum or even the tenor but recent work and clippings  that I have found suggest he remained a finger style player until his death.   He does seem to have abandoned the fifth string as there are pictures of him holding  5 string banjos without a fifth string,   Descriptions of his playing when he returned to the USA in the 1940s describe his as "plucking" the banjo  or playing with his finger.  Some of the descriptions of his playing with horn bands are due to the fact that Lowry also played the alto-sax and appears to have played more alto sax in his involvement with Paris jazz orchestras and recordings he made with Jean Cocteau in the 20s,

Nice seeing you on stage in Berkeley last year.  I should be coming out for some mentoring on Black music history next (2023) year

Jody Stecher said:

There is a fair amount of information about Vance Lowry on the internet and several photos and photocopies of memorabilia. So far, I have found no photos of his banjo. But given the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, I think plectrum banjo is more likely than fingers. 

for instance

https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/3316370898/

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

T

The Bohee Brothers were probably the most famous Black banjo entertainers in the world after Horace Weston.  They were born in the Maratimes of Canada, a place with a Black population where a significant proportion are descendants of Blacks who joined the British in the American revolution and ended up being taken there when it all ended.  At some point in their childhood their family moved to the Boston, MA, as far as I know they had no active entertaining or musical life in Canada.  This is a frequent story in the 19th and early 20th century and may be even going now, members of the the Black community descended from American revolution loyalists getting out of an isolated existence up there and moving to the USA (or Toronto or Montreal) to be part of a larger Black community.

Separately and together the Bohees became major attractions in what could be called Black blackface minstrelsy and appeared in some of the largest of the touring shows featuring Black performers that began after the Civil War.  I am researching entertainers in this period for a presentation at the Banjo Gathering in  November.  They certainly obtained top billing in the ads and the reports for the shows,  Not only did they do specialties on the banjo and singing, but as part of several shows, they mounted the Bohee Banjo Band which I believe included 5 banjoists as a separate part of their shows,   

In the early 1880s they participated in a minstrel company that toured England, and they both decided to stay in England,  They both continued to perform in minstrel and minstrel like entertainment in England.  I havent found anything that suggested they returned to the US on tours.  More famously the Bohees set up a studio for banjo lessons in London when the banjo was the height of fashion in the late 1880s and 1890s.  When I say the height of fashion, I mean to say the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII was famously a pupil of the Bohee's studio.  About 20 years ago Ulf Jagfors from Sweden examined the Buckingham Palace records and discovered not only was Edward their student, but his sister was also taking lessons at that studio.

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

My problem is I am like one of those jugglers who has all these plates spinning in the air and cannot take care of them.

Looking for other things I have found a lot of information about Lowry .   An Australian academic produced  a journal article about his which is totally wrong and ignorant about banjo playing and history, but it led me to a number of other sources.  Plus wthe newspapers and other data we can have access to keeps expanding,  At some point I have to sit down and bring it all together,''

Lowry's father and grandfather were five string banjoists, his grandfather in the Tennessee area near where Gribble, Lusk, and York were!  Lowry became a banjo entertainer starting in his late teen years, though was busking on the streets of Kansas from the age of 12!  Lowry continued to play the five string banjo finger style with all reports of his playing into the 1940s, although his act seems to have shifted more and more from being a jazz soloist or band member and more and more into being a comedian.   We have pictures of him with banjos all the way up to the late 1930s which I will try to collect in some way and get them to you since you request it.  Curiously, we have no pictures of him playing the banjo in the US even though there are notices of him playing the banjo even at the Apollo Theater in Harlem during WWII!!!

But upper management, she has a doctora, and I only an MFA, says stop typing and we will clean up this room!  Back to you Jody,

Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist said:

Jody I had long thought that Lowry switched to Plectrum or even the tenor but recent work and clippings  that I have found suggest he remained a finger style player until his death.   He does seem to have abandoned the fifth string as there are pictures of him holding  5 string banjos without a fifth string,   Descriptions of his playing when he returned to the USA in the 1940s describe his as "plucking" the banjo  or playing with his finger.  Some of the descriptions of his playing with horn bands are due to the fact that Lowry also played the alto-sax and appears to have played more alto sax in his involvement with Paris jazz orchestras and recordings he made with Jean Cocteau in the 20s,

Nice seeing you on stage in Berkeley last year.  I should be coming out for some mentoring on Black music history next (2023) year

Jody Stecher said:

There is a fair amount of information about Vance Lowry on the internet and several photos and photocopies of memorabilia. So far, I have found no photos of his banjo. But given the context of his music which was in bands with horns and drums, I think plectrum banjo is more likely than fingers. 

for instance

https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/3316370898/

[Jody Stecher]

Thanks, Tony. That is more than I knew. I was hoping to find out that there was once a Black banjo culture in the Maritimes but I guess there wasn't. 

Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist said:

T

The Bohee Brothers were probably the most famous Black banjo entertainers in the world after Horace Weston.  They were born in the Maratimes of Canada, a place with a Black population where a significant proportion are descendants of Blacks who joined the British in the American revolution and ended up being taken there when it all ended.  At some point in their childhood their family moved to the Boston, MA, as far as I know they had no active entertaining or musical life in Canada.  This is a frequent story in the 19th and early 20th century and may be even going now, members of the the Black community descended from American revolution loyalists getting out of an isolated existence up there and moving to the USA (or Toronto or Montreal) to be part of a larger Black community.

Separately and together the Bohees became major attractions in what could be called Black blackface minstrelsy and appeared in some of the largest of the touring shows featuring Black performers that began after the Civil War.  I am researching entertainers in this period for a presentation at the Banjo Gathering in  November.  They certainly obtained top billing in the ads and the reports for the shows,  Not only did they do specialties on the banjo and singing, but as part of several shows, they mounted the Bohee Banjo Band which I believe included 5 banjoists as a separate part of their shows,   

In the early 1880s they participated in a minstrel company that toured England, and they both decided to stay in England,  They both continued to perform in minstrel and minstrel like entertainment in England.  I havent found anything that suggested they returned to the US on tours.  More famously the Bohees set up a studio for banjo lessons in London when the banjo was the height of fashion in the late 1880s and 1890s.  When I say the height of fashion, I mean to say the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII was famously a pupil of the Bohee's studio.  About 20 years ago Ulf Jagfors from Sweden examined the Buckingham Palace records and discovered not only was Edward their student, but his sister was also taking lessons at that studio.