Fiddle and Banjo – and Cigar Box Guitars

Apr 20, 2021 | Welcome Column

When I discovered bluegrass music back in the mid-1960s I was puzzled by the contrast between the instruments used by the majority of bluegrass musicians and the folksy origins of ‘mountain music’ as it was often called. Impoverished hill farmers and miners couldn’t have had much disposable income to spend on the kind of instruments we all deem necessary for playing the music today. When Flatt and Scruggs played at Carnegie Hall in 1962 Lester Flatt famously remarked, “Down in our part of the country it hadn’t been too many years ago since just a five-string banjo and a fiddle was called a band.” This introduction was followed by Earl Scruggs and Paul Warren launching into a classic fiddle and banjo duet on ‘Wild Horses at Stoney Point’.

When I first heard the recording of the Carnegie Hall concert, some years later, I wondered how many of the old time string bands from earlier decades had had a banjo player with a top-of-the-line Gibson Mastertone on which to accompany the fiddler. Snuffy Jenkins played one, and I’m sure there are people out there who can supply the names of other professional musicians of the 20s and 30s who had equivalent instruments, but probably not many. And the pictures of old-time bands in my copy of ‘The New Lost City Ramblers Song Book’ seem to bear this out.

Of course times have changed. A budding musician nowadays has access to all kinds of help and support. Who had ever heard, sixty years ago, of formal lessons and special learners’ events like music camps, let alone university degrees in bluegrass music? Economically many more people are able to afford top quality instruments, and manufacturers, from individual custom luthiers to major companies, have responded to the demand. So I was intrigued last year to see a programme on BBC Television with the trailer “Although the cigar box guitar has a long history in the USA, where it formed part of the culture of traditional blues music, it has only recently become popular with musicians in the UK. This film reveals how just three chords, played on their unique, DIY instruments, handmade from recycled materials, connect them to their truth.”

To say I was impressed by the cigar box guitars featured on this programme is an understatement. These are very basic-looking instruments with their bodies made from a cigar box or a biscuit tin plus a simple carved neck with three strings. The shock is that their sound is the real deal! I had seen similar home-made instruments in the hands of musicians photographed in impoverished communities way back and had wondered what they sounded like. Now I know, and it is a reminder that a good musician will make good music on whatever is available. In an old copy of ‘Mandolin Notebook’ one of my favourite bluegrass musicians, Buzz Busby, remarked, “Scotty Stoneman used to tell me that people were jealous of me and him, ’cos we could pick up a piece of trash and make it sound like a real good instrument.” There’s a lesson here! BTW I actually have an old cigar box in which I keep all my bits and pieces like spare strings and picks. I am now sorely tempted to turn it into a three-string guitar and attempt some bottleneck blues licks…

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