When the blues hit the mountains...

 Oldtime music crossover...

While looking for the words to a less-often-heard "shindig in the barn" verse to "Blue Ridge Mountain Blues," I found several "discography" lists, including the two recordings as "Blue Ridge Blues" below... George Reneau's was apparently the first recording of the song. And Lulu Jackson's version gets left out of some of the "country music" or "oldtime music" lists, maybe because it crossed boundaries, but I'd love to read a history about how she wound up recording the song! Her "recitation" of the "There'll be a shindig in the barn" verse is, well, very special.

The song (credited to Cliff Hess under the alias Roy B. Carson at https://secondhandsongs.com/artist/84608) certainly was popular. Other 1920s recordings were by Riley Puckett, Ernest V. Stoneman, The Blue Ridge Duo (Gene Austin and George Reneau), Vernon Dalhart and more. (Hess was a prolific songwriter and pianist who had played on Mississippi riverboats, wrote songs with "blues" in the title as early as 1916, and eventually collaborated with Irving Berlin.) The song also mentions an even older "oldie," "Where is My (Wandering) Boy Tonight," published in 1877 and recorded by many artists from the dawn of cylinder and disc recordings.

"Blue Ridge Blues"

George Reneau , guitar and harmonica, from April '24

https://youtu.be/EwSaYwoZHZU and again with Reneau and Gene Austin:

Al Hopkins' Bucklebusters / The Hill Billies, 1926 or '28 (including fiddle, guitar, banjo & banjo-ukulele!, and 3-or-4-part harmony singing!)

https://youtu.be/a3QxAYItsZM

Also as "Blue Ridge Blues"

Lulu Jackson (vcl/gtr) and piano.

https://youtu.be/L5lBfwWoGpg

December 21, 1928, rec. in Chicago, Vocalion 1242

Enough computer for today... but tomorrow (or someday soon) I'm going looking for more about Lulu!
I'm afraid she gets left out on both sides of the recording-industry color line, even by scholars. I just found a blues discography note from a major reference book: "This artist was of African-American ancestry, but her recordings are essentially in the hillbilly idiom and of little blues interest." (Blues and gospel records 1890-1943 (1997), p. 430) Her versions of "Little Rosewood Casket" and "Careless Love Blues" are very nice too, and available on YouTube. Apparently enough of her 78s have been collected to be reissued in compilations like this one found at the discography website, discogs:

Yes, it's a ukulele -- and a banjo

My "Firefly" banjo-uke raises a few eyebrows around old-time Appalachian music sessions, so I thought I'd put some links here... And maybe a YouTube video of myself when I get around to it. (This is also my first attempt at posting to this old blogger blog from an iPad, so some editing and correction of  links and players for other folks' YouTube videos may be necessary.)

It has four nylon strings (like a uke) and a drum-head (like a banjo). It also tunes uke style, g-C-E-a, with the two outside strings being the highest pitches. The high "g" is the string closest to the thumb, which is also true of the five-string banjo. That coincidence has inspired me to experiment with playing in a "claw hammer" oldtime banjo style, as well as more traditional uke strumming and picking styles.

In addition to playing it in Radford, Blacksburg and Floyd, I've inflicted it on that old gang of mine in Connecticut in December, strumming along on sea chanteys and drinking songs in the pub:
Http://thejovialcrew.com/?page_id=1475

The Firefly is a modern design from a Massachusetts company called http://MagicFluke.com -- I bought mine from http://MimsUkes.com in Floyd, Va., so that I could try it first. I like it because it is incredibly light and, with an extra-long neck, can be adapted to play in more keys, using a capo for some tunes in the keys of A and D.
Here's "Redhaired Boy," usually played in A on fiddle, but sometimes sung as the Irish ditty "Little Beggarman" in other keys. I have experimented with it in both key of C and key of D fingerings on the banjo ukulele.

https://youtu.be/7tAytt4Mhn4

The first time I saw the banjo uke merging with oldtime tunes was 30-some years ago, in the hands of Jeff Claus of the Horseflies, providing a driving rhythm for the band's neo-primitive bug music. More recent example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaVFzdroXKg

 There's no Firefly-Horseflies connection, as far as I know, but stranger things have happened. TheFirefly's  lightness I mentioned is the result of MagicFluke's buying the "drum" shell and its synthetic head already molded or cemented together. There are no metal mounting brackets (originally needed to adjust the tension of  humidity-sensitive natural skin banjoheads) and no wood and metal resonator like some 1920s models. As a result I can head for a jam session carrying a guitar, a mandolin, and the Firefly without needing a cart or pack animal, or feeling like one. And it is so much fun that I often wind up leaving the guitar at home.

Curiously, the razzmatazz strumming style banjo-uke (a.k.a. banjolele) has quite a following in the U.K. (No U.K./uke pun intended) because of a 1930s-40s comedian, singer, actor and pop star named George Formby, who never quite caught on in the States. The George Formby Society (http://www.georgeformby.co.uk) keeps his legend alive and active over there (http://www.georgeformby.co.uk/news/morecambe/130214.html).

For a frighteningly modern development, explore the phenomenon called "chap-hop."

http://youtu.be/6t28COxEp2k