Looking for information and discussion on C.P, Stinson, Hosea Easton, and Vance Lowry

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

     I am at work on a research project on C.P. Stinson, Hosea Easton, and Vance Lowry, three African American banjoists of the late 19th and early 20th century whose careers and lives interlocked.   Over the years I have posted here  a bit about Stinson's connection with Lowry.  I don't think    I have ever posted about Easton who unluckily bears the same name of a major 19th Century African American theologian and abolitionist,

          Stinson is mentioned in Converse's memoirs and has a series of clippings on his banjo and mandolin performances that I have found from the 1880s until his death in 1911.  Especially by the late 90s he is described in both the general American press and in African American newspapers as an entertainer someone is supposed to know without much explanation.  He was a banjoist, mandolinist, and guitarist,  BMG teacher, who chiefly lived in Allegeny PA, part of the Pittsburgh area, although he apparently lived in Youngstown Ohio for a few years, and participated in several touring African American companies and minstrel troupes that toured nationally and internationally.  By the 20th century he seems to have been involved as a solo vaudeville act on national US circuits.   He appeared to have musical training being described as musical director of at least one of the touring companies and of a number of cultural and religious celebrations among Black people in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  He gained notoriety in 1893 by being hired by a major Pittsburgh music store as a teacher and instructor,  news, especially in Black newspapers of the day,. 

Stinson also claimed at one time in his career he manufactured banjos  This spring a banjo probably manufactured for Stinson to sell to students or at his performances by Buckbee  or a similar manufacturer was found by a banjo enthusiast in Ohio.  It is in the process of being donated to the Smithsonian's African American museum.

                    Easton  was born in Hartford CT around 1850-55.  He became known as a banjo entertainer in the 60s or 70s though I have not found much information about him in the US.  The significant part of Easton's career was in Australia and New Zealand where he resided from 1877 or 76 until his death in 1899 and where he is considered the seminal figure in the banjo world.    You can find almost daily notices of his performances in Australian and New Zealand newspapers throughout these years.  He functioned as a banjo entertainer, actor and comedian, and mandolinist.  He advertised himself as a BMG teacher as well.  He and his collaborators seemed to understand the game of writing Stewart from time to time about how wonderful Stewart banjos were and how the local products could not compare!

              Lowry was born in Kansas in the 1880s.  He  one of the stars of the Clef Club concerts in New York before the First World War.   He, went to England in 1914 where he starred in the Ciro Club ensemble, and moved to France by 1917.   Lowry remained in Paris until 1941 where he became very influential in the development of jazz as a banjoist and saxophonist.  He was billed as "King of the banjo" .   In the 20s  and  30s Lowry collaborated with French poet, librettist, novelist, actor, film director, and painter Jean Cocteau in poetry performances, musical recordings, and film.  He continued as a saxophonist and banjo on his return to the US and died in Kansas in 1948.

               Lowry's story may illustrate links between five string and tenor banjoists.   In 1911 it was announced that Stinson would be launching a major vaudeville act with Lowry who later became known as a tenor banjoist and jazz saxophonist.  Stinson died before the new vaudeville season began.  Lowry was a known banjo entertainer before the tenor banjo became standardized and at least in one photograph appears to have used a five-string banjo even if the recordings of the group pictured suggest he was playing it as a tenor.

                   One mystery in all this is what Stinson claimed was an 1887 Kansas City banjo contest that he won. Converse describes as an 1884 banjo challenge between Stinson and Dan Polk in Kansas City during a vaudeville performance which Converse claims Polk won. Converse puts Polk’s victory squarely in Converse's  approval of the need of  white banjoists to put Stinson in his proper place as an African America. It is not clear whether these are two separate events or one event recalled or inflated differently.   What I consider to be Stinson's accounts are what is said in several press clipping that appear to be generated by interviews with Stinson.  He seemed to rather consciously work at puffery like most banjo entertainers of his time.

                  While I welcome responses in this group, I invite you to write me directly on these issues at [e-mail]

 

banjovially,

 

Tony Thomas

West Palm Beach, Florida

[Byron Thomas]

I don't have any information on the individuals mentioned but thanks to recent post and the work of Joel we can now see a piece that looks to be written by Hosea Easton from the book Correct Elements of Playing by W.J. Stent, Schottische "Extacy"

Banjo Method, Correct Elements Of Playing : W. J. Stent : Free Down...

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Stent was an associate of Hosea Easton and was the formal leader of the American Banjo club based in Sydney (it imight have been the US banjo club).  He was closely associated with Hosea Easton.  Easton who was from Hartford Connecticut (aka home of the stars) who had landed in New Zealand and Austrialia in 1877 and never left except a brief appearance in a show that toured to Hong Kong, until his death in 1899,  Easton and Stent were hard core supporters of what one had to do to tell that you went along with the Stewart way, now and then sending in the obligatory letters about how wonderful the Stewart Banjos they had were to all competition.   Easton was from Hartford Connecticut and apparently knew Horace Weston who was from Ansonia Connecticut .   Easton's father was a jack of all trades African American in Hartford, including being a hack carriage operator, music teacher, and conductor of a dancing school, and made banjos.  There is some evidence that before Weston joined the Navy int he Civil War, he lived in Hartford, even though he was from Ansonia Derby in the Eastern part of the state.  Hartford police were pretty firm in harassing Black people in the pre Civil War period so we can find policer records of charges against both Horace Weston in his late teens and some of Easton's releatives and perhaps Easton in Hartford at the time.. 

Hosea Easton's grandfather was one of the first African American and also native American (he had mixe dancestry) intellectual figures in the US, an intensely famous theologian and advocate for civil rights for both native people and African Americans, and a precursor of the kind of liberation theology that would blossom in the pre Civil War period with reflections in another Hartford person, Harriet Beecher Stowe,   It is quite 

Stent seems to have been the primary operator along with Hosea Easton in the US Banjo club or society--typing this away from my files--that was based in Sydney and continued on for years after Easton died.   

Like Easton Stent kept up a regular enough correspondence with the Stewart Journal with effusive praise of Stewart Banjos as did Easton.   

It would be useful for someone more adept at what is properly called the Guitar Style of the Banjo to examine how much Stent's various Banjo Methods directly borrowed from Stewart materials. 

The focus of banjo researchers on banjo origins and roots, and folk banjo playing is wonderful, but the extent of the commercial and parlor expansion of the banjo on an international level which the custodians of the "Classic Banjo" movement have preserved and studied cannot be underestimated in its international extension.

Thanks,

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

    Just an aside., Hosea Easton the minister, civil rights activist, and theologian and theorist of both Native American and African American rights who began his life in Massachusetts and spent his last decade or so in the Hartford era, had two, perhaps three children and grandchildren who were named after him.  This has created confusion in the discussion of Hosea Easton, the banjoist.   The Rev. Hosea Easton was born and spent much of his life in Massachusetts, but late in the life he moved to Hartford, 

The Reverend Easton had a son who lived in Hartford, with the name Hosea Easton ,his Hosea Easton is recorded in censuses and city directories as a laborer, a cook, and a waiter, and  for his service in the Union Army during the Civil War i.  He returned to Hartford after the war, and seems to have died in by 1883, when.his wife starts appearing in the census and city directories as separtetly and not he, she as Mrs. Hosea Easton.

Hosea Easton the banjoist was the grandson of the great Reverend Easton by another son of the great Reverend, Samsom Easton.  Samsom was also a banjoist, at one time tried to manufacture banjos, and gave music and dancing lessons, but must have made his living mainly by owning his own coach and acting as a coachman for those who could  pay,   He carried on the family tradition of antislavery activism, and reputedly once draped the Old State House,  the state capital of Connecticut- part time-with an anti-slavery flag, 

There are some sources that I have not fully substantiated who suggest that Samson Easton also taught Hosea Weston to play the banjo or that the young Weston and the young Easton traipsed about Hartford picking the banjo together,   Weston certainly lived in Hartford for a year or two.  Like many Black folks including the Easton family, Weston's presence can be documented by his appearance in newspaper articles about police court for charges that essentially translate to "being a young living African American."

Unfortunately, there is a confusion on this issue produced by Rhiannon Giddens or whomever she pays to write stuff that appears under her name that confuses Hosaa Easton's son,  Hosea Easton, Jr. who was a Civil War veteran, a laborer, a cook, and and a waiter  who apparently died in the early 1880s and and seems to have lived in Hartford except for his service in the Civil War with Hosea Easton the banjoist, who was the grandson of the great civil rights activist and liberation theologian.  The banjoist was born about 9 years after the Rev Easton had passed away

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

For the Weston people here, this casts doubt on the story that Weston became a banjoist when a guitar broke while he was performing,  Samson Easton who may have taught both his son and Weston, taught music and dance through standard notation..  On the other hand, wasn't true that Weston may have been a master of playing a variety of instruments from standard notation, except the banjo, Or was that an act to meet an image of being a gifted performer.  This seems part of an act imposed by racist stereotypes on Black musicians.  Louis Armstrong, for example, took of the trumpet, as opposed to singing, while incarcerated in a reform school.  Once he had a modicum of success in Chicago int he 20s he hired a German orchestral trumpet player to give him lessons in classical trumpet technique.  Yet he was told to tell the public he could not read music,

Thanks for being here,  and long live the memory and example of the great Eli Kaufman and his worthy continuator Joel Hooks!

[Jody Stecher]

Right. So we've got H East-on and H West-on.  What about Hiram  North-on and Hezekiah South-on?  Or their grandfathers who had the same names?

[Byron Thomas]

This is a lot of food for thought! Thanks Tony!

When it comes to what Stent borrowed from Stewart for his own banjo method, nothing in particular is standing out to me that isn't already standard technique by this point in time. The 2nd half of the method similar to other methods of the time. I've run into banjo methods where you are given a solid plectrum lesson and then when ragtime comes up, a song example is not provided.

As for the notion that Weston couldn't read for the banjo, this was from Albert Baur letters to the S.S. Stewart Banjo and Guitar Journal. This apparently was a hot take back when written by Baur and he wrote a second part to defend his assertion as he states that he was told by Weston himself. The page numbers are the journal page number not the pdf page number.

Weston interaction on page 5

Journal Defense of itself and Baur page 6

Baur Defense page 6

[Trapdoor2]

And just for fun, here's "Extacy" in a little bit clearer form (plus Tab and an mp3). I've simply put it in AABA-Trio-ABA form...which is how I have interpreted the original directions.