The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy
by Bob Carlin
Our Price: $35.00
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $32.00 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Bob CarlinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-21
ISBN: 0786428740
Number of pages: 203
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Book Reviews of The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy
Book Review: Sweeney restored to his proper place, good serious work!
Summary: 5 Stars
Bob Carlin spent years and years researching, consulting, studying, documenting, and otherwise working on this book. To some of us who joked about how this book might never appear, Bob always responded, I've got to get everything right.
Bob did get everything right, at least as far as I know, here. In doing so he provides a strong practical basis not just for the life of Sweeney but for the nature of early Minstrelsy, the roots of the five string banjo, the spread of banjo playing and minstrelsy to Britain, and much about the nature of the entertainment business in the 1830s through the 1850s.
No one who wants to know about the five-string banjo, American cultural and musical history should be without this book, No one.
This book has the same strengths that Carlin's earlier book on Piedmont Carolina String Bands has. Bob's interest is not to create, validate, or invalidate this or that academic theory. Bob isn't an academic. He is one of the best banjo players, banjo item collectors, and instructors and students of the history of the old time banjo. He was one of the pioneers of the rediscovery of minstrel banjo playing, and accompanied old time music and bluegrass legend John Hartford as well as Joe Thompson, the last remaining traditional African American fiddler.
In this book, Bob Carlin has gathered a wealth of information which he presents clearly and in an orderly manner. He completely disposes of the legend that Sweeney invented the banjo or invented the fifth string of the banjo. Sweeney never claimed that, but claims of that nature were made about him after his death. Carlin tracts down the origins of those claims in a detailed and documented way.
This does not mean that this is a book of Sweeney bashing. Carlin's approach is respect for the great musical capacities this entertainer had and how as he says like Elvis, he energized the whole music world by combining African American and white musics in a new form of entertainment. We do get the sense of how Sweeney's banjo playing and his real background in African American music and his own skills made him widely popular in Britain and America. Yet, the book also showed how age and changing fashions in minstrelsy and entertainment in general meant that Sweeney's star eventually fell.
This book is good, hard, serious work, put forward in a clear manner and will be one of the bedrocks of study of the banjo, minstrelsy, and American popular culture.
Biographies & Memoirs Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Banjo DVDS,. Books and CDS
Deering Goodtime BanjoDeering; Deering; Deering; Musical Instruments
Best price: $379.00
Price in other shops:
The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsyby Bob Carlin
McFarland & Company; Published: 2007-02-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $27.99
Price in other shops:
DVD-Learn To Play Clawhammer Banjo-Lesson 1Release date: 2004-08-06; DVD
Best price: $17.58
Price in other shops:
The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjoby Patrick Costello
Pik-Ware Publishing; Published: 2003-09-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.95
DVD-Old-Time Banjo Styles Taught By Mike SeegerRelease date: 2005-01-01; DVD
Best price: $23.90
Price in other shops:
Flatt & Scruggs - The Complete Mercury RecordingsRelease date: 2003-04-22; Music CD
Best price: $10.21
Price in other shops:
Vintage BanjoRelease date: 1999-12-01; Music CD
Best price: $15.99
Shady Grove Old Time Music from North Carolina, Kentucky and VirginiaRelease date: 2004-05-25; DVD
Best price: $13.99
Price in other shops:
Roscoe Holcomb - The High Lonesome SoundRelease date: 1998-01-20; Music CD
Best price: $11.50
Price in other shops:
Dock Boggs - Dock Boggs: His Folkways Years 1963-1968Release date: 1998-09-15; Music CD
Best price: $17.50
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjoby Patrick Costello
Pik-Ware Publishing; Published: 2003-09-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.95
How to Set Up the Best Sounding Banjoby Roger H. Siminoff
Hal Leonard; Published: 1999-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.07
Price in other shops:
Banjo For Dummies (For Dummies (Sports & Hobbies))by Bill Evans
For Dummies; Published: 2007-08-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.31
Price in other shops:
String Bands in the North Carolina Piedmontby Bob Carlin
McFarland & Company; Published: 2004-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $39.95
Ring the BanjarCenterstream Publications; Published: 1996-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.99
Price in other shops:
The Early Minstrel Banjo: Technique and Repertoireby Joe Weidlich
Centerstream Publications; Published: 2004-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $17.46
Price in other shops:
Picturing the Banjoby Leo G. Mazow
Pennsylvania State University Press; Published: 2005-12-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $17.99
Price in other shops:
America's Instrument: The Banjo in the Ninteenth Centuryby Philip F. Gura, James F. Bollman
The University of North Carolina Press; Published: 1999-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $36.56
Price in other shops:
That Half-Barbaric Twang: THE BANJO IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE (Music in American Life)by Karen Linn
University of Illinois Press; Published: 1994-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.53
Price in other shops:
African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions (Publications of the American Folklore Society New Series)by Cecelia Conway
University of Tennessee Press; Published: 1995-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.40
Price in other shops: