Sydney Bluegrass and Old Time Get-together, August 2023
We acknowledge that this gathering takes place on beautiful Gadigal Country. We are Gary Crockett and Jane Wallace.
Tonight you’ll hear tunes from the 19th and 21st centuries, played on various instruments, including a very special tackhead fretless banjo built by Jeff Menzies in Jamaica. The 21st century songs are my own. We hope you enjoy the performance.
So what makes the banjo special?
The banjo is compelling for many reasons. Its design, and method of construction, remains almost unchanged since its first recorded appearances in the Caribbean slave colonies from the early 1700s. Its role as part of religious ceremonies and unauthorised gatherings of both enslaved and free workers, and ongoing efforts to have it banned over the centuries, indicates that the banjo carried more cultural and spiritual significance to enslaved and creole communities than we know. Until the early 1800s, the instrument was built and played exclusively by African American musicians both free and enslaved, far from mainstream colonial society, and typically dismissed as primitive, crude and baffling. After 1820 the instrument (now called the banjo) rose to international fame as the iconic sound of minstrel performances that travelled across the globe well into the 20th century. Nearly two hundred years later, its origin stories are being uncovered, along with a complex story of suffering, pain and survival.
The banjo is also a truth-teller and somehow in its sound you can sense the voices of people whose lives have been crushed or caricatured by history. Somehow they are present. As a cipher across time, the banjo helps us recover and reframe these lost voices and experiences, alongside those lived in more recent times, and find intriguing parallels.
We’ve divided the program into three parts:
- A BANJO ON MY KNEE
- A TUNE FOR WOODY
- DEATH DON’T YOU SPARE ME
In order to summon these embedded voices, we try to remove ourselves. We play quietly and sparsely. Unvarnished and pared back. Listen to the songs, not us. Listen carefully and you’ll hear voices too.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The African American experience, its historical roots in the horrors and mayhem of slavery and its ongoing racial injustices, is not our story to tell. We acknowledge this, and offer African Americans and all other colonised communities respect and admiration in standing tall to tell their own story. We can, however, bring ‘visibility’ to aspects of that history and hint at the experiences of marginalised people carried in popular tunes that survive.
A BANJO ON MY KNEE
[Jeff Menzies tackhead banjo with fretless fingerboard, calfskin head and animal gut strings]
This particular banjo is a replica of a ‘pre-mass produced’ instrument built around 1840. The pot is made from the hoop of an antique grain measure, through which is inserted a fretless mahogany neck, matching the same system of construction used on 18th century creole banzas and strum strumps, to the latest high end Jason Romero models built today. During the early 1800s, banjos like this were played on vaudeville stages, at events of all kinds both religious and secular, in homes and social gatherings, and on bloody civil war battlefields.
CHARLOTTE TOWN
Gary Crockett, 2023
CARRY ME BACK TO OLD VIRGINNY
James Bland, 1878
OH SUSANNA
Stephen Foster, 1847
Charlotte Town is a surrealist ode to an Antebellum world in turmoil, drawing together strands of Vodou faith and defiance, the universal damage of war and hopes of eternal heavenly comfort. Carry Me Back To Old Virginny was written by the prolific composer James Bland in 1878, a free African American man from New York, and was the official state song of Virginia until 1997 when it was retired on account of its racist lyrics. Like many songs written for the minstrel circuit, it stoked a warped confederate fantasy, where a freed slave fondly recalls his old plantation home, hoping to meet his former owners and family on the distant shore. Oh Susanna, one of the most well known and loved tunes of all time was written in 1847 by 21 year old Pensylvanian Stephen Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), who composed songs for the minstrel stage although had Abolitionist sympathies and died of a broken heart at 38 midway through the Civil war.
A TUNE FOR WOODY
[Recording King ‘Madison’ with goat hide head and Nylgut medium strings]
THE COWBOY WALTZ
Unknown origin, c1860
This sweet tune, sometimes called The Cowboy Waltz, was recorded by Woody Guthrie (on fiddle) in 1944 and known variously as Cavalier’s Waltz, Keller’s Waltz, Minnesota Dutchman, Cheese, Cheese, Limburger Cheese and Pawel Waltz – almost certainly related melodies with a common ancestor in German tradition, possibly in circulation among children of Germans who came to Ravenna, Michigan, (north of Kalamazoo) after the Civil War. Woody on fiddle, enough said…
DEATH DON’T YOU SPARE ME
[Ome ‘Tupelo’ 12 inch pot, American Cherry pot and neck, synthetic head and steel strings]
DON’T BURY ME DOWN IN THE COLD COLD GROUND
Gary Crockett, 2022
BANKS OF THE OHIO
Unknown origin, 1800s
CALICO BONNET
Gary Crockett, 2004
Like all great folk creations, these songs summon restless spirits. Don’t Bury Me Down in The Cold Cold Ground, written by me in 2022, is pure ‘dying cowboy on the Prairie’ trope, although chimes nicely with a world-weariness and dust-to-dust existentialism all of us can relate to today. Banks Of The Ohio, a cautionary tale about a lover who coldly murders her beau because he won’t marry her, before facing the consequences, was written sometime in the 1800s. The first known version of it was recorded 12 August 1927 by Red Patterson’s Piedmont Log Rollers. Written in 2004, Calico Bonnet is the first song I ever penned, in which a lonely and world weary mountain shack dweller, angrily curses the lord for taking his partner and leaving him behind, while praying for his own salvation. Death don’t you spare me…
THE SONGS
CHARLOTTE TOWN
Gary Crockett, 2022
I went down to Charlotte town / Want to get my fortune read.
Things I heard there, I must confess / Don’t believe a word she said.
The rain it pays no attention / To the feelings of the dog.
The rabbit is of no consequence / To the movement of the clouds.
A soldier’s life is full of woe / Take my hand I’ll comfort thee.
Throw away all your uniforms / Go and set your prisoners free.
Throw your canons in the fire / Throw your cannonballs there too.
Melt your sabres and bayonets / Alchemise them all anew.
Sweep the graves of your enemies / plant a weeping willow high
As the cool wind blows through the leaves / listen to the mothers cry
(So it’s) Hot corn bread when I wake up / Coffee in the bed I lay.
I’ll be dead a long long long time / In heaven’s gate I’ll stay.
But when I cross to the other side / With a broom I’ll sweep my way.
‘Til this soldier’s long dead and gone / I wanna hear the banjo play.
CARRY ME BACK TO OLD VIRGINNY
James Bland, published 1878
Carry me back to old Virginny,
There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There’s where this old broken heart is long’d to go.
There’s where I laboured so hard for my family,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the place where I was born.
Carry me back to old Virginny,
There let me live ’till I wither and decay,
Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered,
There’s where this old spirit’s life will pass away.
Wife and my children have long gone before me,
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we’ll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There’s where we’ll meet and we’ll never part no more.
OH SUSANNA
Stephen Foster 1847, published 1848
Well I came from Alabama, with a banjo on my knee.
I’m going to Louisiana, my true love for to see.
It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry.
The sun so hot I froze myself, Susanna, don’t you cry.
Oh Susanna, oh don’t you cry for me
Cause I’ve come from Alabama, with my banjo on my knee
I jumped aboard the telegraph, and travelled down the river
The ‘lectric’ fluid magnified, and killed a hundred sailors.The bull gone bust, the horse run off, I really thought I’d die,
I shut my eyes to hold my breath, Susanna don’t you cry.
Oh Susanna, oh don’t you cry for me…
I had a dream the other night, when everything was still
I thought I saw Susanna coming down the hill
The buckwheat cake was in her mouth, a tear was in her eye
Says I, “I’m coming from the south, Susanna, don’t you cry”
Oh Susanna, oh don’t you cry for me…
I soon will be in New Orleans, and then I’ll look all round
And when I find Susanna, I will fall upon the ground
And If I do not find her, this man will surely die
And when I’m dead and buried, Susanna, don’t you cry
Oh Susanna, oh don’t you cry for me…
CALICO BONNET
Gary Crockett, 2004
A calico bonnet hangs down from the wall,
A hurricane lantern, blackened and cold.
Linoleum corners curled up on the floor,
Newspapers poked through the cracks in the door.
Colours and voices go round in my head,
Diamonds and silver and lipstick so red,
Till angels appeared and away you were led
To his holy kingdom, from our humble bed.
Oh death don’t you spare me, take me this time,
From this mountain home that treats me unkind.
Cover my face and wrap me in pine,
With Gabriel’s hands encircled in mine.
A tiny box covered in velvet and shells,
A handkerchief folded flowers and bells.
A picture of you and your aunt Annabelle,
Your calico bonnet upon your sweet head.
Colours and voices go round in my head…
Oh death don’t you spare me, take me this time,
From this mountain home that treats me unkind.
Cover my face and wrap me in pine,
With Gabriel’s hands encircled in mine.
DON’T BURY ME DOWN IN THE COLD COLD GROUND
Gary Crockett, 2022
Don’t bury me down in the cold cold ground
Just lay me on the trail.
And the wild dogs and deer and porcupines
And the black bears will go by me.
Don’t put a stone with my name drawn on
Don’t plant a willow tree.
Don’t let your eyes dine on an old grave of mine
No hymns you’ll sing for me.
Don’t beat the drums slow or play the pipes low
Just polish my tall black shoes.
And make my belt shine, hang my clothes on the line
And wear my old hat sometime.
Don’t wind up the clock or my best Sunday watch
No need to tell the time.
And scratch off the name from my walking cane
And lay it by my side.
And go down the stairs and saddle my mare
And lead her from the stall.
And go out at night, in the starry moonlight
And by me gently roam.
Put up a tent when the rains set in
And the winds of winter bite.
Take it down when the sun shines so
My bones will turn to white.
BANKS OF THE OHIO
Origin unknown, 1800s
Come my love, let’s take a walk.
Just a little way away.
While we walk along we’ll talk,
Talk about our wedding day.
Only say that you’ll be mine,
And in our home we’ll happy be.
Down beside where the waters flow.
Down on the banks of the Ohio.
I drew my knife across his throat,
And to my breast he gently pressed.
“Please, oh please, don’t murder me,
For I’m unprepared to die you see.”
I taken him by his lily white hand.
I let him down, and I bade him stand.
There I plunged him in to drown,
And watched him as he floated down
Returning home ‘tween twelve and one.
Thinking of the deed done.
I murdered a man, my love you see,
Because he would not marry me.
Only say that you’ll be mine…
The very day bout half past four
I met the sheriff standing in the door.
He said young woman come with me and go,
Down to the banks of the Ohio.
Only say that you’ll be mine…