Tony Liddington's book about pierrot troupes has been published, prices vary so shop around

[Richard William Ineson]

[Ethan Schwartz]

I'm interested in reading it, but $24 to RENT the e-book version? Who exactly is Routledge trying to prevent from reading this? I'll wait a few months and see if the situation is any different. 

[Richard William Ineson]

I did say that prices vary and that you need to shop around

Ethan Schwartz said:

I'm interested in reading it, but $24 to RENT the e-book version? Who exactly is Routledge trying to prevent from reading this? I'll wait a few months and see if the situation is any different. 

[Richard William Ineson]

I've had two or three Wilkes banjos over the years but haven't seen one in the flesh for some time. Are these the banjos that had a hole in the head?

Mike Bostock said:

Richard, I have two closely related banjo-Pierrot group photos. One of the banjos in both photos is unmistakably made by Manchester maker F.C Wilkes. I have script that identifies the banjo player as ‘Frank’. We’re currently using other clues to discover whether this may be Mr Frank Wilkes himself. I’ll stick the photos up here shortly.

Ethan, commercial publishers have no agenda to ‘withhold’. They are simply in business to make money (I used to work in book publishing)! ebooks are subject to the same financial motivation though the transaction may take different form due to the nature of digital media. In this case Routledge is just securing their list and therefore revenue in an environment that is in rights terms very fluid and potentially fickle.

[Richard William Ineson]

Interesting how many banjos turn up/have survived. There used to be a banjo collector in Manchester called Eric Silverstone who had a pile of these banjos made by Wilkes, in the 1970s. The  four which I have owned I bought in local salesrooms for not much money, two of them still had the plastic like/ebonite/bakelite reinforcing ring around the sound hole, one had a wooden ring possibly ebony or rosewood, and one had  got a full, hopeless vellum having presumably lost the ring at some time in its life. I never bothered setting them up or playing them as I didn't think that they were worth the effort

[Richard William Ineson]

Spellcheck/Autocorrect. For 'hopeless' read 'Holeless'

Richard William Ineson said:

Interesting how many banjos turn up/have survived. There used to be a banjo collector in Manchester called Eric Silverstone who had a pile of these banjos made by Wilkes, in the 1970s. The  four which I have owned I bought in local salesrooms for not much money, two of them still had the plastic like/ebonite/bakelite reinforcing ring around the sound hole, one had a wooden ring possibly ebony or rosewood, and one had  got a full, hopeless vellum having presumably lost the ring at some time in its life. I never bothered setting them up or playing them as I didn't think that they were worth the effort

[Richard William Ineson]

It was a different time, in the1960s/ 1970s there were a lot of good banjos knocking about, every junk shop had two or three; a busker in Sheffield used to play outside a city centre pub using a Bacon and Day Style 9, it had Christmas sellotape covering holes in the vellum and the owner used to stick his cigarettes in the  F holes in the resonator. I remember a junk shop in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh which had a great stack of fretless banjos all priced at around £10.00 and nobody wanted to buy them. It was easy to buy  good banjos, in perfect condition, made by prominent makers in those days, so banjos like those made by Wilkes and similar manufacturers were not much in demand. I used to buy a lot of banjos in those days and often picked up banjos in the salerooms which had not sold in the auction for £5.00 or less. The folk music aficionados were keen to buy American five string banjos, and the trad jazz banjoists all wanted American plectrum and tenor banjos but otherwise there was little interest. I used to sell loads of banjos to people who just wanted one to hang on the wall. 

[Richard William Ineson]

Yes, that was Rueben Ruebens, I think that Tsumura bought his collection.

Mike Bostock said:

As the saying goes about buses...

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/mctears-galle...

They're obviously still kicking around. I guess the 1960's junk shop bonanza period was just one stage of their life cycle. Maybe reflective of a time before collectors became interested? I know there was that early (first?) collector around the Portobello Road who bought dozens but couldn't play a single one of them. 

[Richard William Ineson]

"Simplicity is always a valid choice, but it is the quiet, easy victim of brash, competitive commercially motivated marketing." A good example of this is the fact that Alfred Weaver, probably the  foremost British banjo maker, didn't get a section of Tsumuras '1000 Banjos' book to himself, (Cammeyer was also snubbed in a similar fashion) unsurprisingly, there is only one Weaver made banjo in the entire book and that is unattributed. Meanwhile, there are pages of  flashy looking zither banjos covered with lashings of MOP, marquetry, stringing, and cross banding. Joe Morley had developed his technique and composed his earliest pieces using a fretless banjo, I'm not surprised that he removed the frets from the  fretted banjo which Essex gave to him for his London debut, he wouldn't have had time to become comfortable with the instrument.
Mike Bostock said:

One of the characteristic features of the early banjo period is the wealth and diversity of banjo manufacture. It would be wonderful if one result of current research is that a wider selection of these fascinating and well-made banjos are ‘redesignated’ from inert collectors curios to players instruments. Tone and feel and instrument choice is of course a personal choice. But personal choice is also informed by knowledge, attitude and appreciation/respect. The long disregard of this wealth and diversity of banjo manufacture as live instrument potential has much less to do with technical ‘progression’ and far more to do with the persistence of proscriptive dogma. Simplicity is always a valid choice, but it is the quiet, easy victim of brash, competitive commercially motivated marketing. I’m always struck by the well-known story of Joe Morley’s quite stubborn resistance to switch, and his removal of frets when he first did. The hesitancy and resistance of a young but already accomplished musician should tell us something. But we have to be open to listen to heed the relevance.