Mel Bay's The Art of the Mountain Banjo (Fantasy) [Paperback]

Art Rosenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999 | Series: Fantasy

A complete survey of traditional banjo styles complete with tunings, playing tips, and the author's deft drawings. Progresses from easy tunes for the beginner to more difficult pieces. The styles include up-picking or Pete Seeger's basic strum; two-finger picking; three-finger picking; and what had variously been called frailing, clawhammer, knocking, rapping, overhand, fram-style, flayin' hand, and other Appalachian names, here called down-picking.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Art Rosenbaum of Athens, Georgia, has been collecting, studying, and performing traditional American music for over 35 years. He sings and plays 5-string banjo, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, and mouth bow. His repertoire, much of it learned first-hand in the course of his field work, ranges for Appalachian banjo tunes and ballads through Southern and Midwestern fiddle tunes to blues and spirituals. Rosenbaum began seeking out traditional performers while in his teens, rediscovering and recording the great blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and fiddler John W. Summers, both in his home state of Indiana. He produced LPs of Indiana blues and folk music, the first of the over 14 documentary recordings he has recorded and produced over the years. While living in New York City, he was part of the folk revival of the '50s and '60s, performing in as well as organizing concerts of traditional music with the Friends of Old Time Music. Through the years Rosenbaum has performed in the U.S., Canada, and Europe and appeared at the Newport, Winnipeg, Mariposa, and Philadelphia folk festivals. He has worked solo and in duo with Iowa fiddler Al Murphy and played with string bands such as the Passaic Country Chanb'ry Player and Pappy Wells' Ozark Square Dance Band. Currently, he plays banjo with Phil Tanner's Skillet Lickers of Dacula, Georgia, a continuation of the famous Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers founded by Phil's grandfather in the 1920s. He has recorded with many folk performers and had two solo recordings on the Kicking Mule label. Among his recent performances are solo concerts in 1995 and 1998 at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is occasionally joined in performance by Margo Rosenbaum on banjo. An authority on traditional banjo styles, Rosenbaum wrote two instructional books on the banjo, the influential Old-Time Mountain Banjo (Oak Publications, 1968) and The Art of the Mountain Banjo (Kicking Mule, 1975). He was a teacher/performer at all three semi-annual sessions of the Tennessee Banjo Institute. He is also author of Folk Visions and Voices: Traditional Music and Song in North Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 1983) which also features his drawings and paintings and Margo Newmark Rosenbaum's photographs. Art and Margo Rosenbaum have collaborated on a second book, Shout Because You're Free; The Ring Shout and Its Survival in a Georgia Coastal Community, released by the University of Georgia Press in 1998. Art Rosenbaum is a regular recording and book reviewer for The Old Time Herald and he and his wife were featured in an article in that magazine in 1995. Art was director of the University of Georgia Festival of North Georgia Traditional Music and Dance on the occasion of the 1996 Olympic Games. Rosenbaum teaches drawing and painting in the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Mel Bay Publications, INc. (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786633786
• ISBN-13: 978-0786633784
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #438,081 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Reference Work--Core Collection Item, November 13, 2010

By 

Spotnik (Washington, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mel Bay's The Art of the Mountain Banjo (Fantasy) (Paperback)

I'm amazed that no one has reviewed this yet. This reissue was published about ten years ago. I hunted down the old kicking mule copies via interlibrary loan years ago, and though the tab used on those original imprints was a bit odd, it was still readable. It's such a relief to see these arrangements in normal tab finally!

The book comes with a CD of the first Kicking Mule album, and that's almost worth the price of admission right there. I love those recordings--even if Art takes things a bit fast at times, he mixes up solos with a good choice of songs you're not liable to find anywhere else("Tennessee Line Hard Times", a variant of "Old Reuben"). One gripe is that they may as well have just added his second album as well for good measure.

I especially appreciate the mix of transcriptions of clawhammer with other picking styles. As much as we associate clawhammer with traditional banjo picking, there were other picking styles that pre-dated Scruggs. Art Rosenbaum seems to be the only one who gives these styles any air time. For example, I love Doc Boggs, and I learned a great deal about Boggs' style working out Art's transcription of "Country Blues"

If you're just a straight clawhammer player, I still think it's worth getting for those arrangments. The rest makes for a nice encyclopedia of oddball picking styles. So, I'll lead off with five stars.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great overview of traditional banjo styles, January 3, 2011

By 

Kevin Schlottmann (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mel Bay's The Art of the Mountain Banjo (Fantasy) (Paperback)

I second the review above -- this a great collection of tunes and arrangements that also provides an excellent introduction to many of the lesser-known pre-bluegrass mountain styles of banjo playing. It is worth noting that the clawhammer tab, which takes up about 3/4 of the book, is definitely more sophisticated than the average beginner's guide to frailing. This is probably not the best book for the absolute beginner, although for musicians picking up the banjo for the first time it would most likely work. I would strongly recommend it to those looking to expand their old-time banjo repertoire beyond the basics.