St. Louis Tickle

[Jody Stecher]

I'm not sure where to post info about mp3-s I've posted so I guess I'll do it here. I've just uploaded a casual recording of St Louis Tickle that I had made for a friend so he could get a feel for the tune. Imperfect as it is, I like the feel of this rendition. It was recorded on my mac using Garage Band and the mac's built in mic. No too bad at all. Sorry about the talking and interruptions. The "technical difficulty" was the banjo sliding off my lap.

St Louis Tickle was written for the St Louis Missouri Exposition by Theron Catlan Bennett in 1904. I'm playing it on a banjo that was built a year earlier in England. It's a Windsor Grand Solo, a high end banjo based on AA Farland's beveled rim idea but with a different angle to the bevel. I'll see if I can post an advert for this model that I have. One of the many ways it is unusual is that it has no tailpiece. Instead there are five little posts built into the heavy tension hoop. It's fitted with a translucent cow or calf skin (you can see my shirt through it on the picture on my page here) and nylgut strings. The bridge is 106 years old and inscribed "windsor". It has concave feet!. I've tried any number of bridges on this banjo and this one sounds best.

[Jody Stecher]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll record and post more in due course. To *get* the feel listen to Vess Ossman! My version, which differs a little bit from day to day, is based on listening to two rather different cylinder recordings of Ossman playing this tune and consulting three different printed banjo arrangements. Some of the indicated fingerings were brilliant and I borrowed those. I changed others. The banjo arrangements were each adaptations of brass band music. I could probably post the 2 Ossman recordings here if there is interest.

[Jody Stecher]

OK, here they come. The better banjo playing IMO is in the worse setting, a recording studio band that is not particularly sympatico, but the banjo playing is stellar. The other recording is Ossman in a trio of himself and the Dudley Brothers on harp guitar and banjo-mandolin (mandolin-banjo). The choice of bass notes of the harp guitar is so different from what would be played today. I really like it. Ossman himself is a bit shaky compared to the other recording. But then he may well be playing entirely in closed position. It's hard to know what key he was in at the recording session as there was no standardization of rpm in cylinders and early discs.

[Trapdoor2]

Great stuff, Jody. Keep posting tunes! I would like to request some of you and Bill Evans' duets!! I tried to get Bill to work up a duet back a few years ago at one of the banjo camps...but he was far too busy.

[Jody Stecher]

Well I alerted Bill about this site and it looks like he signed up this afternoon. I think he can be persuaded to record some duets with me to post here. And I believe he has access to a video camera, which would be even better. It isn't only at camps that Bill has been very busy. FIrst he was writing Banjo For Dummies and now he's touring a great deal with fiddler Megan Lynch. However our duo The Secret Life Of Banjos will no doubt regain its former glory in due course. This is to say I hope to be able to post some audio or video duets with Bill but it is unlikely to be this week.

[marc dalmasso]

hello from France , Jody ; it s fine ta have your friend Bill on this site , i saw he was not only a bluegrass player and because the world is small , i have one of my very good & old friend , a guitar player who is living now in Munich , and was in Paris in 1984 _ with his band he played the 1st pârt & jam of a show from a band called "cloud valley " & he told me the banjo player was bill .

[marc dalmasso]

and same way , to have you on the site @+m

[Jody Stecher]

Thank you, Marc, and good to be here. I thought I detected at certain moments in your videos that you have had experience playing bluegrass (fretting the 5th string for instance).(?) I see that Marc from Alabama also has his Melodic Bluegrass moments, getting successive notes on different strings. I am the same, using whatever techniques brings out the music.

Yes, since those early Cloud Valley days, Bill has expanded musically to include all kinds of banjo music in his repertoire.

Did you know the banjo player Bob Black when he lived in Germany? He is my band mate for 10 years. He plays some classic repertoire as well. He plays the fire out of Chicken Chowder for instance.

[marc dalmasso]

Bobby black : it ' is not the same guy who played steel guitar with commander cody ?

[Jody Stecher]

No, that BB is still playing and living here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The BB I'm referring to lives in Iowa. He played banjo with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in the 1970s and wrote a book about that called Come Hither To Go Yonder. Before he got married and moved back to the states he was playing in a German band called Ground Speed.