A Quote by Bela Fleck
And then Earl Scruggs comes along and transforms the banjo into a virtuosic modern instrument. For the first time, the Southern banjo style becomes the identity of the banjo, and everything from before is wiped off of people's consciousness by the power of that explosion.
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Earl Scruggs had this thing that it wasn't just the technique or even the instrument. It was him. There was this soulful quality that came through that made you - if you're somebody like me who was, I guess, supposed to play the banjo, it made you stop in your tracks, and you couldn't do anything until you got done hearing him play, and then immediately you'd have to go try and find a banjo.
I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.
I play a replica of a banjo from the 1950s. It was the first commercial-style banjo in the United States so it's the first one that white people played.
Being from New York, I wonder why am I inspired by bluegrass and Earl Scruggs? But when I look at the whole history of the banjo, I feel really good about it, including the Earl Scruggs part.
I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.
The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as 'What's that?' There's something very compelling about it to certain people; that's the way I was; that's the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.
I first heard the banjo on the Beverly Hillbillies, and from then on I was banjo-conscious. But I didn't actually get one until my grandfather gave me one, almost by mistake. He knew I was playing a little bit of guitar. He saw a banjo at a flea market and bought it. I took it home with me and just never put it down. I was fifteen.
The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.
I play banjo, and in Britain, it's easy to get away with playing banjo because you don't often see it on U.K. stages. In America, people know when you're a good banjo player, so I was really nervous about playing out there. But we actually went down really well.
I mean if it wasn't for Earl Scruggs, guys like me wouldn't be doing what we're doing. I mean, he's changed so many people's lives, honestly. I was thinking about all the thousands of people that live in Nashville, like myself, that there's no reason a guy from New York would end up down there if it wasn't for the sound of Earl Scruggs' banjo coming over the airwaves and just changing my life.
It's horrible for someone to listen to someone learning any instrument - when I was first learning the banjo, I used to have to go out and sit in the car, and even in the summertime I'd have to roll up the windows. Because you just couldn't practice a banjo or a fiddle with other people around. Unless they're being paid.
The bottom line is, between Sonny Osborne and Earl Scruggs, I better know how to play banjo. I had the greatest teachers in the world.
When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.
English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.
I wrote a post about wanting to buy a banjo - a $300 banjo, which is a lot of money, and I don't play instruments; I don't know anything about music. I like music, and I like banjos, and I think I probably heard Steve Martin playing, and I said, 'I could do that.' And I said to my husband, I said, 'Ben, can I buy a banjo?' And he's like, 'No.'
My first banjo? My mother's sister, my aunt, lived about a mile from where we did, and she raised some hogs. And she had - her - the hog - the mother - they called the mother a sow - of a hog. And she had some pigs. Well, the pigs were real pretty, and I was going to high school and I was taking agriculture in school. And I sort of got a notion that I'd like to do that, raise some hogs. And so my aunt had this old banjo, and my mother told me, said, which do you want, the pig or a banjo? And each one of them's $5 each. I said, I'll just take the banjo.
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