North Carolina Banjo and Pre-Bluegrass String Band Music ･ﾟ✧

It was a tragic time for North America and banjo lovers's handkerchiefs were resplendent in caked snot. With the growth of the jazz age, the five-string banjo’s popularity dwindled. First, early jazz lopped off the fifth string and utilized a four-string tenor banjo. Then that banjo got phased out in favor of the louder guitar. Country blues was guitarring it up. Banjo sales plummeted during the Great Depression (I'd be depressed, too, without banjos) and WWII and manufacturers like Gibson quit making new banjo parts. There was no love for Band Joe's banjo in the band, yo.

A few areas maintained a culture of banjo picking, as in the North Carolina Piedmont, with its own regional styles. One of North Carolina's early recorded stylists, Charlie Poole, utilized a two-finger technique for the very good reason of "he broke his fingers in a baseball bet gone wrong" (it started wrong, too). Charlie Poole did gutsier (moonshining, rabble-rousing, police-fist-fighting) things than catch a baseball without a glove, but this particular mistake meant he couldn't control his fingers to play the more common clawhammer style. Thus, as recorded in the 1920s, Charlie Poole’s two-fingered method [Columbia 15307-D], with roots in the classical style, became a precursor to a regional three-finger style.

Poole wasn’t the only picker to employ such a regional banjo style. During the 1930s, ten years before bluegrass was born, North Carolinian musicians like Wade Mainer, J. E. Mainer, the Morris Brothers, and their interrelated bands demonstrated markedly similar sounds: blazing tempos; high-energy harmonies; an ensemble of fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and guitar; and a two- or three-fingered banjo taking melodic lead.

J. E. Mainer received his first instrument the way most people do: watching a drunk fiddler get taken out by a train. The untouched fiddle needed a new owner, so lo and behold, J. E. became the Chosen One. Two-finger banjo picking brother Wade Mainer joined forces with J. E. and guitarist Zeke Morris to create J. E. Mainer and His Crazy Mountaineers, or, as known after securing a 1935 recording contract, J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers. Wade and Zeke briefly split off for a duo act [Bluebird B-6596, Bluebird B-6993] while J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers recorded in a different lineup [Bluebird B-6440], but they returned to J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers (or, Mainer’s Mountaineers) before a June 1936 recording session that employed Junior Misenheimer on fast-rolling, prominent banjo parts [Montgomery Ward M-7006, Montgomery Ward M-7008, Bluebird B-6479].

By 1937, the Mainer brothers had split again and formed separate bands. The offshoot with J. E. Mainer was formed by WIS radio promoter Byron Parker as Byron Parker’s Hillbillies. The Byron Parker-led act took on different names and formulations and lasted to the end of the '40s [Deluxe 5018]. This 1937 formulation, still recording as J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers, boasted George Morris on guitar, Leonard Stokes on mandolin, J. E. Mainer on fiddle, and three-fingered banjo picker Snuffy Jenkins [Bluebird B-7289], the first three-fingered banjo picker to be heard on radio, and whose style would influence future bluegrass pioneers Don Reno and Earl Scruggs.

Meanwhile, Wade Mainer and Zeke Morris, with the addition of Wiley Morris, took their act to Raleigh on radio station WPTF. By 1938, Wade Mainer and the Morris Brothers split; Mainer created the short-lived Wade Mainer and His Smilin’ Rangers [Bluebird B-7249], which became Wade Mainer and Sons of the Mountaineers [Montgomery Ward M-7559, Montgomery Ward M-7560, Montgomery Ward M-7565]. Zeke and Wiley formed the Morris Brothers.

Why's this matter? Why go into the Mainers, the Morrises, Byron Parker, Snuffy, Misenheimer, and everyone else who picked and grinned in the Carolinas? Well... it's because... right on the radio stations with 'em... was a bloke named Bill Monroe. He didn't grin much, but he did a whole lotta pickin'.