Folk Visions and Voices: Traditional Music and Song in North Georgia

I Used to Do Some Frolickin': Jake Staggers, Black Banjo-Picker of Toccoa

I Used to Do Some Frolickiri JAKE STAGGERS BLACK BANJO-PICKEROF TOCCOA URING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY the five-string banjo developed from a crude plantation instrument of African descent, through a period of popularization in traveling minstrel and tent shows, into a favorite of southern musicians , black and white, for playing song accompaniment and dance tunes. Jake Staggers was born in the last year of the century, at a time when black musicians, who had figured most importantly in the evolution of the banjo's picking styles and repertoire, were dropping the instrument in favor of the guitar, better suited for the blues and rags that were then coming into fashion. Jake was drawn to the banjo, however, and, starting at ten years, learned to play from his older brother Hansell, a friend named Jesse Godine, and Garnett Spencer, a white man. He learned on a homemade instrument made out of a tin pan with a cat-skin head, though ground-hog and even fish-skinheads were also used at the time. Born in Oconee County, South Carolina,Jake Staggers has lived the last fifty years across the Tugaloo River, in Toccoa, Georgia. His working years were spent on railroad section gangs and in construction work; he drove an egg truck for a time. He was a sought-after musician in the community, playing for both black and white dances, in churches, at corn shuckings and hog killings. Christmas season would see him going through the streets of Toccoa playing a banjo hanging from his neck by a rope, parading to a dance with other musicians to the light of "flambeaux," torches of bottles and kerosene -soaked rags on long poles. In his old age he is a dignified and reflective man, comforted by a close and loving family and appreciative friends; but he is also anxious about the crime and social disorganization of the modern world, worse in his mind than the sporadic violence that marked his backwoods youth. When we met him he had not played in years because of arthritis, but he told us he had been "dreaming about playing again." He has practiced his rhythmic drop-thumb frailing banjo style and his highly improvisatory singing of his interesting repertoire of preblues dance pieces, railroad songs, and spirituals. He is the only active black banjo picker we know of in Georgia, and the flavor of his life and music comes across best in his own words. When we talked with him at his home in a Toccoa housing project in April 1981,1 started by asking him how he got started in music. "That's all right. First, when I was ten years old ... in Walhalla, South Carolina. My brother had two banjos, and I'd have him tune 'em up. And he'd leave, I picked one till it go down [out of tune], and I'd go get the other 'n. And somebody come by and tune it back up. Then I got to tune it myself." I wondered whether there were several people in the community who played. "Oh, yeah," he answered, "lot o' people played. The old songs, y'know. They had no songs like you got now, all these fancy songs. We had all these old breakdowns, y'know. . . . Blues, and things, lot of people played on guitar, not played on no banjer." He said he was ten years old when he played his first square dance. I asked him what that was like. "All night. I could go to the house today. Madison, South Carolina. Played 'Garfield.' That's the first thing I played. 'Garfield.' Ha!Old 'Garfield.' " "Who did you learn 'Garfield' from?" "My brother. I don't know where he got it at. He worked on the railroad a long time ago, y'know. Thought of a song, pick it up and sing 'em. I'd make banjos out of a board, tack me some nails, tack it 74 / Used toDo Some Frolickiri D Jake Staggers and His Family. (Toccoa, 1981.) in the end of it and tighten it, spool thread and tighten it, put a bridge on it. ... Have that, and played a jew's-harp, played a French harp [harmonica], play a stick, bow it like that, tie a can, put it to your mouth, and play a tune." He was referring to the primitive Afro-American mouth bow, which he called "bow'n arra...