Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story

5. Learning the Banjo

= @ M < Learning the Banjo I described how Grandpa Frost helped Scott with the fiddle, but he also was the one that taught Momma to play the banjo in all those tunings. Like the other mountain banjo players, Grandpa used to make his banjos with the animals he would kill. He would get the hairs off the skin and stretch it on the drum of the banjo to make the head. Daddy, when he made instruments, would just go to the store and buy a skin head. Nowadays of course people use plastic. My Grandpa Frost is maybe why I ended up being a banjo player. When I was about seven, he told me a story about a young lady who came to Virginia in a wagon train and played banjo. The girl’s family was going through the mountains, and they stopped at the campgrounds at Galax, which is where Grandpa saw her. The girl was sitting on the back of a wagon, barefooted, swinging her feet, playing old songs like “Cumberland Gap,” and he was struck on her because of how good she played. ning the Banjo Learning the Banjo pressing on / 35 As he bragged on her, he took them blue-gray eyes and he just stared at me. I said to myself, I’m gonna play the banjo and make him proud of me. But Scott was the one who became my main teacher on the banjo.And he was determined I was not going to play the old-fashioned clawhammer style of Grandpa, Momma, and the wagon train girl. He was going to have me play the new three-finger style that Earl Scruggs was making so popular. The sound was sharper, more ringing, more driving—bing bing bing. You played with picks, and it was very hard to learn. Often when I would start practicing, Momma would say, “Roni, we got to have the dishes done,” “Roni, Roni, you got to sweep the floor.” I’d say, “Mommy, I never get to practice. I gotta practice, Mom, I gotta learn.” She’d say, “Well, daggone it, honey, you gotta learn how to sweep the floor too.” I would sneak out in the back, in the woods. The banjo was pretty heavy, so I’d practice on a tree stump. I’d just stretch my legs out apart, put the banjo on the stump, and reach around it and pick and pick. Scott would come out. “Did you get it right yet?” I’d say, “I will, Scott, if you just . . .” “Now, don’t stop, and don’t make it sound like a gallop.” A gallop is using your forefinger and your middle finger at the same time and not separating them. You’re blurring it. “Each string has a personality,” Scott used to say. “Each string’s got its own sound and that means it’s got its own personality and its own character. It has to sound so you hear it.And keep the strings ringing at all times, even if you have to go boom, ching, boom, ching. Take your index finger and hit the second string and then take the thumb and your middle finger and pull the strings, bong, ching, bong, ching. Keep them strings a-ringing.” He made Donna on the mandolin and me on the banjo really strong players. He would get mad and scream right in our faces, “Don’t play like a girl! I don’t want you ever playing like a girl! Just because you’re a girl ain’t no sign that you don’t have ten fingers. You have two hands like a man, you’ve got a brain like a man, you’ve got strength in your arms. Press down on those strings. You can play like a man.” He was really obsessed with that. He’d say to me, “I want you to practice ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ until you hate its guts, as if it had innards.” He made me practice the 36 / pressing on rolls. He said, “If you learn the way Earl Scruggs does ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown,’ you’ll have all the rolls you need to know. It’s got every roll in the world. Same with ‘Dear Old Dixie.’” He’d show me how to slow down records to hear the rolls. There was a neighbor kid, Jimmy Goran, lived up the street. And he saw me all the time walking around going one-two-three, one-two-three, practicing my rolls. He’d say, “Here comes that retarded, knock-kneed little hillbilly playing that stupid banjo.” But I was really interested in getting those rolls going smoothly, and I didn’t care what he said. I was knock-kneed. He was right about that. I guess because I was so skinny, my knees automatically knocked together. The insides of my knees were bruised and so were my ankles. As a teacher, Scott didn’t have any mercy. “You’re sounding like a girl. Make them notes clear. Mash those strings.” And he’d press my fingers down. Now, when you’re learning, it’s so frustrating. I’d say, “All right, don’t teach me anymore, Scott.” Then I’d go downstairs in the basement and get on my knees and cry—and then practice some more. Why I wanted to play so bad, I do not know. Probably because of my grandfather’s story of the banjo-playing girl. And maybe also because of what I said about always being the one punished when we kids were acting up. I asked Momma one day, “How come I’m the one who always gets whupped?” “Well,” she said, “if you played an instrument and your Daddy had to take you out to play with him, maybe he wouldn’t whup you so much.” But I can’t say for sure that those reasons are the whole explanation. They certainly don’t say why I wanted so bad to play like Scott wanted me to play. I don’t know, other than I loved him so much. When you got it, he was like a pep rally. He would make you feel you could do anything. You could set the world on fire, no matter how many great musicians there were out there. You were going to get in that contest tomorrow, and he was going to play the guitar behind you, and you were going to win. I remember preparing before one of those contests. Now my banjo head was pretty dirty on the front from me dragging it around, so in the morning before Daddy went to work, I said, “Daddy, can I turn this head around? It’s awful dirty.” “No, you can’t. You just can’t do it.” But pressing on / 37 when he left for work, I got to looking at that thing and I thought, I can take all these brackets off and I can push that head inside out. And I did it. Daddy had taught me how to put the head on. You had to wet it and then pull it down a little bit and let it dry, then wet it and pull it down and let it dry, and so on. One of Scott’s buddies was Bill Emerson. He was from a very wealthy successful family—his father owned some car dealerships. One day I was practicing my old banjo, and Bill walked in with Scott. He pointed at me. “You can’t play three-finger picking style,” he said. “I can too!” “Naw, you ain’t gonna learn it.” “What makes you say I ain’t?” “’Cause you’re a girl.” “So what? I can play, and I can play faster than you.” “No, you can’t either!” And I walked over to him with my little homemade banjo—him standing so tall with his brand new banjo—and I kicked him as hard as I could in the shin. Momma got after me: “Roni, you stop doing that. You’re a young lady and you’re not supposed to be fighting.” “I’ll kick him in the other leg, Ma, if he don’t quit telling me I can’t play!” Scott was smiling, enjoying the whole thing. Years later when Bill Emerson was performing with a fine band, the Country Gentlemen, I went to see him play—he was really a great player. He also became a leader of the navy bluegrass band in Washington. And much later when I was in Buckeystown, Maryland, and they were giving me an award for all my years of banjo work, the presenter was . . . Bill Emerson. He said, “I am very very proud to present this to Roni Stoneman . I am overjoyed.” And a tear came to his eye. “I told ya!” I said, and I grinned. Our idol was Earl Scruggs, the genius of the three-finger picking style. One day, Scott came to me and he said, “Roni, guess what! Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs are gonna be over at Glen Echo Park.” It was kind of an amusement park. Oh, my God, I thought. Not my hero!! 38 / pressing on So we go over there and I walk by the dressing room. The door was open and Scruggs was sitting in there, a quiet man, holding but not playing his banjo. I had on my little old feed sack dress, and I just stood there in the doorway staring at him. I was probably about ten but because I was so little and thin I must have looked about seven. “Do you like banjo music?” he asked finally. “Yep.” “That’s good.” I twisted the hem of my dress around. “I play banjer too.” “You do?” “Yes, I do. I play banjer.” “Do you play clawhammer?” “No, I play three-finger, like you.” “You play three-finger style?” “Yeah. You know how I learned it?” “No.” “Well, I have a record player. And I put your records on and slow them down. Then I tune my banjo down to the sound, and I get your rolls like that.” “You mean you slowed . . .” “Yeah, I got your rolls to ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ just right.” “You have my rolls?” “Yeah, you know like your rolls, down your fingers . . .” “Yeah, I know what you mean.” And then I said, “I don’t do nothing fancy. I just play like you.” He must have been trying really hard not to burst out laughing. “I’m so glad. Well, sometime you’ll have to pick for me.” “Yeah, I will, I will.” And my eyes were as big as watermelons. There on his lap was a Gibson Mastertone. I went, Oh my gosh, a Mastertone. I was in love with the Mastertone and with his banjo picking . And that was the “world’s famous” Earl Scruggs. My banjo playing was getting better. I remember one night, really morning, it was about 2:30, Scott came in with five of his buddies. He started shaking me awake. “Roni, get out of bed, get out of bed! We gotta go to Balt’mer.” “To Balt’mer? What for, Scott?” pressing on / 39 “There’s some bands up there that undercut me. They told the man they’d play for twenty dollars cheaper. We gonna get up there and show them a lesson.” “What we gonna show them, Scott?” “C’mon, get up!” he said. “Let’s go. We gotta go!” So we drove all the way to “Balt’mer.” The place we went to was a joint, a huge honky-tonk. I had never seen so many sailors and soldiers in one congregation of people! There was nothing but military everywhere . A bluegrass band was playing loud, and Scott says, “I want you to go in first, and pretend like you don’t know me.” Now, at that time I was still very young, probably about twelve, and, again, much younger looking, about nine, a pitiful underfed waif wearing old bibbed overalls, socks held up by rubber bands, and raggedy loafers. Scott said, “I want you to go up there and ask the guy, ‘Can I play your banjo?’ Then you get up there, and you play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ and you play ‘Cripple Creek,’ then you go into ‘Dear Old Dixie,’ and then you play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ again.” So I went up to the bandstand. “C’n I play your banjer?” I said to the banjo player. “No!” “Just one little song on your banjer? Or his banjer?” “No.” Then Scott walked in and stood at the back. “Let the little girl play!” he shouted. And the sailors started yelling, “Let the little girl play one of your banjos!” “Let her play!” “She’s not gonna hurt your banjo.” “You scared the little girl’s gonna play better than you?” someone called out. And everyone laughed. Then the manager, or maybe he was the owner, came over. “Let her play,” he said. “Let her play your banjo.” So the guy had no choice. “Thank you for letting me use your banjer,” I said. “What’s your name, little girl?” “My name’s Roni.” 40 / pressing on “And what are you gonna play for us, Roni?” “‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown.’” Well I lit into “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” played it as fast as I had been trained to by Scott. And it was fast. I almost outran the band. Here I am, twelve years old, the only girl in the world at that time that could play three-finger picking style banjo (not bragging but that’s the truth). Scott’s in the back and he’s grinning. The sailors and soldiers screamed and screamed. Then I played “Cripple Creek,” then “Dear Old Dixie,” then repeated “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” just like Scott had told me. They didn’t want to let me off the stage. They were still screaming. And when I put down the banjo, they picked me up and threw me in the air, like a football hero. They passed me on over their heads, yelling, “Yea, yea, yea!” all the way the length of the hall. I was scared out of my mind. The band just stood around on the stage. They couldn’t play. Scott went up to the bandleader and said, “I told you, you son of a bitch, I was gonna get back at you.” Scott was hired back that night. In the next few years, as Donna and I got to be better musicians, Scott would often take us with him to play music, his two sisters. We would get up against these big men. We’d just stand there, and Scott would say, “Play.” He had trained us and by golly he was gonna show us off. There are lots of different ways of playing three-finger picking style banjo. People tell me that I have a distinctive sound. I did invent something . I had been practicing about two years, and I was just playing around with my right hand and I found I could do a roll twice and still keep the timing. Scott said, “What it is is a double roll.” And I said, “That’s what I thought too.” Years later Gus Friedlander of Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music told me that I was doing triplets over a two/four beat—for those of you who understand that kind of language! The double roll was something I just felt in my soul, and I’d stick it in where I wanted to. I think what makes a special sound also is the way you accent the notes. A professor of music once said to me, “You play differently from everybody else. You punctuate every note.” There are lots of banjo players I really admire. Don Reno of Don Reno and Red Smiley. They were from around our area, and they played in places we played, so I got to watch them from the stage as a young girl. pressing on / 41 And Raymond Fairchild. Now, he’s a showman on the banjo. When he plays “Johnson’s Mule,” he’s playing behind the bridge of the banjo, and it sounds exactly like a mule braying. And nobody else in the world can do it. He goes mmmmm boom chick boom chick, and his face is just so solemn and he never looks down at his fingers. He can do all that chromatic stuff too, the flashy style where you play a lot of individual notes. But he doesn’t do too much of it. Too much chromatic and you lose the feeling of the banjo. You might as well play a guitar or a zither. Raymond Fairchild does just the right amount. And Ralph Stanley, the master of mountain music—of course I really admired him. It wasn’t just that the singing was lonesome, Ralph’s banjo playing was too. Anybody can sing a lonesome old mountain song if you’re from the hills—Oh faaair and tender laaaadies. But to have the lonesome sound that Ralph Stanley has in his playing, that comes from the inner soul. There’s nobody in the banjo world that plays as lonesome as he does. When I play, I play fast, and the faster I get, the happier I am. I’m fast moving, and it just comes out that way. Scott was the same way. He was hyper and he was the fastest fiddle player in the world. But Ralph, he’s slow moving. He studies everything. He walks like he’s studying each step. And he plays that way too, though he can play fast if he wants to. He’s from hard times, and the sound of the hills is in his sad heart and it comes out in his banjo. He’s very popular now. Sad feelings are coming back into our music. Every time the economy gets down, acoustical music comes alive, or as Momma would say, comes to the front. Well, back to my becoming a banjo player. In the late fifties, when I was still a teenager, I became the first woman ever recorded playing three-finger style. That was because Mike Seeger came into our area collecting music. When I first met him, I kept staring at him, and I said to myself, Now, he’s different. What’s making him look different? It was his clothes—he was wearing brown corduroy pants and old tennis shoes, or sometimes sandals. I had never seen a grown man dressed like that. He had a recorder, and he recorded my parents for one album on southern mountain music and then me for another album on banjo Scruggs style. He also recorded many other people, and this was really a great thing. If he hadn’t done that, there would have been a lot of old-time musicians 42 / pressing on without any kind of recognition. It was sure a big deal for me. After that record came out in 1957, with me playing “Lonesome Road Blues,” the only woman on the record, I became known as the First Lady of Banjo, and that’s what people call me today. But it took awhile for that to get around, and for some time after, I was still using homemade banjos. The first banjo Daddy made for me had a tiny neck. The second one he made when I was older was bigger, but it still wasn’t great—it was never all that kosher when it came to being in tune. And I needed a good banjo because I was getting jobs and playing with Scott more. One day Scott said, “There’s gonna be a contest at Sunset Park and the prize is a Vega banjo.” I said, “Okay, I’m gonna go up there and get that banjo.” “Well,” said Scott, “S——” (I’m not going to use his real name) “is gonna be in that contest, and he’s gonna bring his clumerage of people, all them people he drags with him from New York.” He called it a clumerage, and years later when I used that word, someone corrected me—“‘entourage,’ it’s ‘entourage.’” And I said, “Well, I like clumerage better, even if Scott made the word up, because it also means a-clamoring—those people just a-clubbering and a-clamoring around!” Anyway, Scott said, “S is just reading the music. But he’s got his clumerage of people and they’ll gather around the stage and applaud real hard so that he’ll win the contest. It doesn’t make him any better. That’s what you ought to do, get a whole bunch of people around to clumerage the stage. If you find a tree where there might be mikes hanging near, just get near the tree and gather your own clumerage.” So I went up there and I got in the contest, though I didn’t notice any other girls. It came down to two banjo players, me and S. And before the final showdown, I was playing out under a tree. There’s a picture of me. I was wearing a gold-colored shirtwaist dress and I had a scarf around my neck. I had a real long neck, which my brothers used to say was a stovepipe neck. Donna said, “Wear a scarf. That’ll hide it.” So I often did—and my neck looked like a stovepipe with a scarf! In the picture you can see that there were a lot of people all standing around watching me—my “clumerage”—but I was oblivious to them. Then I went back up there on the stage and was really working hard, pressing on / 43 really giving S a run for his money. There were ten judges. They called both S and me into this room off at the back of the stage. “Roni, we can’t give this contest to you,” said one of the judges. “The crowd is yelling for you, but we can’t give you this banjo.” “Why?” “Because you’re a girl. And if we give it to you, they’ll tear this park apart.” “But you said they was yelling for me.” “Well, there’s some people out there don’t want a girl.” S was standing behind me. And the judge said, “We gotta give it to him, Roni. We can’t let you win.” The emcee said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner of the banjo is . . .” And he called out S’s name, and S walked out, with all of his buddies cheering for him. I saw him carry the banjo off. I just stood there and watched that banjo go. ...