Question on Whistling Rufus

[David Gillespie]

Ian or other members,

I just heard tonight, for the first time, Ians part 1 of Whistling Rufus! Wow! I love it! Where can I find your notation that you reference in the video? I found Kerry Mills Notation on the Music Library. Do you also have any tablature of the piece by chance? What a song! I hope I can learn it on my 1896 SS Stewart!

Thanks for all you do. From South Carolina, USA,

David Gillespie

[Jody Stecher]

OOH, thanks a million for this. This is pure gold. This is the cleanest version I've heard. Now I can actually hear what Ossman is playing as the banjo is not buried under noise. 

Joel Hooks said:

Ossman playing this: (also the 4th part).

https://archive.org/details/VessLOssman/VessLOssman-WhistlingRufus.mp3

[David Gillespie]

Joel Hooks said:

Ossman playing this: (also the 4th part).

https://archive.org/details/VessLOssman/VessLOssman-WhistlingRufus.mp3

This is amazing that it still exists! Nice to hear an old master doing what he does best and from its first generation of the song. ! Thanks brother, David G

[David Gillespie]

Ian,

Thank you so much! This is most helpful, sir! I think this is my favorite classic banjo piece. Also would you ever consider revisiting the lesson and showing your fingering for the rest of the parts of Whistling Rufus? Also my Great Uncle Luther Ellison was in a band here in the American South during the early 1900s and here is a picture of him playing his banjo. Any idea what kind of banjo it may be? I just realized the top of the banjo is cut off.

Your fan here in South Carolina,

David Gillespie

thereallyniceman said:

Hi David,

Yes a great tune indeed. I recorded this ages ago at about the time I ended up in hospital, so the other parts of the score never got done. (I must have forgotten all about them!)

Here is the score from the video:

attached is a TAB version done by Marc Smith

[Joel Hooks]

Technically, this is, or rather started life as, a piano cakewalk.  It seems to have been much more frequently played in England, being published by CE.  I do not recall this being published for 5 string classic banjo in the US.  Walter Jacobs did issue it for plectrum banjo and we have that by way of the Jacob's Banjo Collections found on this website as well as the Internet Archive.  I also have a Guitar arrangement from 1930.

To me, this calls into question how popular it was with American banjoists. Walter Jacobs published a very large catalog of regular banjo music, and it was very high quality.  He also made a habit of issuing popular piano pieces as solos for various instruments including regular banjo.  These piano to banjo arrangements are all very playable and most lay well on the fingerboard.  For Jacobs to not issue WR seems strange. 

The American Banjo Fraternity uses this as one of the "group numbers".  This list was assembled during the "ragtime revival".  Another piece we play is "Smiler Rag" which was not published for banjo and only exists in various manuscript forms.  In fact, MANY pieces favored by that first gen of ABF members were piano rags that were not generally popular with banjoists prior to the "ragtime revival". 

We do know that American banjoists were buying English sheet music, but by the time this happened the boom was over and fingerstyle banjo was in rapid decline of popularity.  Add to this the A/C notation fiasco or breakdown (the nail in the fingerstyle banjo coffin) and I'm not sure how widely circulated the CE version was in the US, if at all during what we call the "classic era".

[Jody Stecher]

Whistling Rufus may not have been a popular banjo piece in the USA but in a different musical subculture it was widely played. It was played in G major by southern fiddlers. Still is. And before that it was a song (as opposed to an instrumental with no sung words). It is attributed to Kerry Mills who also composed or might have composed Georgia Camp Meeting and Red Wing but some think it is older. 

What I don't know is if the words were added later or if it began as a song or as instrumental music.

Joel Hooks said:

Technically, this is, or rather started life as, a piano cakewalk.  It seems to have been much more frequently played in England, being published by CE.  I do not recall this being published for 5 string classic banjo in the US.  Walter Jacobs did issue it for plectrum banjo and we have that by way of the Jacob's Banjo Collections found on this website as well as the Internet Archive.  I also have a Guitar arrangement from 1930.

To me, this calls into question how popular it was with American banjoists. Walter Jacobs published a very large catalog of regular banjo music, and it was very high quality.  He also made a habit of issuing popular piano pieces as solos for various instruments including regular banjo.  These piano to banjo arrangements are all very playable and most lay well on the fingerboard.  For Jacobs to not issue WR seems strange. 

The American Banjo Fraternity uses this as one of the "group numbers".  This list was assembled during the "ragtime revival".  Another piece we play is "Smiler Rag" which was not published for banjo and only exists in various manuscript forms.  In fact, MANY pieces favored by that first gen of ABF members were piano rags that were not generally popular with banjoists prior to the "ragtime revival". 

We do know that American banjoists were buying English sheet music, but by the time this happened the boom was over and fingerstyle banjo was in rapid decline of popularity.  Add to this the A/C notation fiasco or breakdown (the nail in the fingerstyle banjo coffin) and I'm not sure how widely circulated the CE version was in the US, if at all during what we call the "classic era".

[Joel Hooks]

WF-- march or instrumental came first, words came second, and what lyrics they are.

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/...

Red Wing was the other way, Mills composed the song then later released a piano instrumental with modulating trio in the standard format. 

BTW, I've got nothing against piano rags arranged for banjo, and this was something that was quite common and well circulated as evidence by volume of arrangements as well as concert listings in Cadenza and Crescendo.  Not to mention Ossman and Van Eps cranking out recordings.  It just seems that WF was not one of those, which seems weird given that it was very popular for not only piano but brass band too. 

[Jody Stecher]

Does WF mean WR?

Joel Hooks said:

WF-- march or instrumental came first, words came second, and what lyrics they are.

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/...

Red Wing was the other way, Mills composed the song then later released a piano instrumental with modulating trio in the standard format. 

BTW, I've got nothing against piano rags arranged for banjo, and this was something that was quite common and well circulated as evidence by volume of arrangements as well as concert listings in Cadenza and Crescendo.  Not to mention Ossman and Van Eps cranking out recordings.  It just seems that WF was not one of those, which seems weird given that it was very popular for not only piano but brass band too. 

[Jody Stecher]

I'm not Ian and I don't know the identity of the banjo but I'm interested in the cello. It has only two strings. And two pegs. Whether it was built as a normal 4 string cello or as a 2-string one I don't know but this is the first I've seen. I've seen a number of three string basses but this is a first for me.

David Gillespie said:

Also my Great Uncle Luther Ellison was in a band here in the American South during the early 1900s and here is a picture of him playing his banjo. Any idea what kind of banjo it may be? I just realized the top of the banjo is cut off.

[Joel Hooks]

Yes, typo

Jody Stecher said:

Does WF mean WR?

Joel Hooks said:

WF-- march or instrumental came first, words came second, and what lyrics they are.

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/...

Red Wing was the other way, Mills composed the song then later released a piano instrumental with modulating trio in the standard format. 

BTW, I've got nothing against piano rags arranged for banjo, and this was something that was quite common and well circulated as evidence by volume of arrangements as well as concert listings in Cadenza and Crescendo.  Not to mention Ossman and Van Eps cranking out recordings.  It just seems that WF was not one of those, which seems weird given that it was very popular for not only piano but brass band too. 

[Steve Harrison]

Hi David, if you like WR, have you had a listen to Kerry mill's Red Wing. I've written an arrangement for it which is available in the music library. It's one of my favourite arrangements and isn't too much of a challenge to play. I took the arrangement from the piano score and have included the trio section which is often omitted by some musicians....Steve.

[Richard William Ineson]

Hi Jody, In answer to your question, "I wonder why this variation is labeled "Rag-time Trio".  It is not more raggy than the first two parts of the tune. It's the usual third part melody accompanied by a "bunk-a-chink-a" rhythm.) I don't think that many people in the UK knew anything about ragtime at the turn of the 19th century. This arrangement of the Trio of WR 'in the style of Vess Ossman' was just designed to  get a few more sales of the sheet music from Ossaman fans. Here is the cover of the 'Famous Ragtime Banjo Solos' series from Clifford Essex, amongst the titles are 'All the Winner's (a medley of popular songs, including 'How You Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm?') 'Anona', 'Salome', 'Teddy Bear's Picnic' none of which, in my limited experience, I would classify as being compositions having anything to do with ragtime. 
Jody Stecher said:

Wow. I can see why nobody played it. I just tried. The first hurdle is in the second bar. As the melody moves up the frets of the bass string we are told to play A natural with third finger in between PB and 10 PB. It doesn't seem humanly possible to get to the 10PB from the A when played at normal speed. I got around it by delaying the 10 PB to the second half of the measure.  For the first half I played the following F major chord: A on fret 9 with the index, and strings 3,2 and 1 all at fret 10. I tried this barring with the 2nd finger, barring with the 3rd, and playing strings 3,2 and 1 with fingers 2, 3 and 4. This last way was the most comfortable. No matter how I formed the chord, locating the melody note (A) in the context of a chord rather than an isolated single pitch allowed me to play at speed. 

The next barrier was in measure 5.  Here I had the opposite problem. If I played the measure with all four fingers on the fretboard my 4th finger kept touching the higher strings, which muted them. I got around that by removing the 4th finger immediately after playing G and not returning it until needed in the second half of the measure,

I wonder why this variation is labeled "Rag-time Trio".  It is not more raggy than the first two parts of the tune. It's the usual third part melody accompanied by a "bunk-a-chink-a" rhythm.

At any rate, thank you Richard for posting this. I like how it sounds. I'll learn to play it. Now *someone* will play it.

Richard William Ineson said:

Here's another version of the Trio, arranged by Joe Morley, in the style of Vess Ossman. Essex discontinued publishing this extra section because he never heard anybody play it. Essex mentioned that when Ossman played Whistling Rufus at one of the London concerts in 1903, a gentleman in the audience became so excited that he threw his hat in the air and lost it.

Trapdoor2 said:

Here's the Tab, all 4 parts. I'm in SC too...down in Myrtle Beach.

I'm ntrioot a fan of the 4th part. It is per the original but to me it sounds 'tacked on' to fill space. That might be because I played the CE version a lot before discovering the 4th part.

[Jody Stecher]

Thanks, Richard. That certainly answers my question. 

Richard William Ineson said:

Hi Jody, In answer to your question, "I wonder why this variation is labeled "Rag-time Trio".  It is not more raggy than the first two parts of the tune. It's the usual third part melody accompanied by a "bunk-a-chink-a" rhythm.) I don't think that many people in the UK knew anything about ragtime at the turn of the 19th century. This arrangement of the Trio of WR 'in the style of Vess Ossman' was just designed to  get a few more sales of the sheet music from Ossaman fans. Here is the cover of the 'Famous Ragtime Banjo Solos' series from Clifford Essex, amongst the titles are 'All the Winner's (a medley of popular songs, including 'How You Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm?') 'Anona', 'Salome', 'Teddy Bear's Picnic' none of which, in my limited experience, I would classify as being compositions having anything to do with ragtime.