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Instrument Interview: The Jug

History Instruments

October 13, 2021

Posted on October 13, 2021October 19, 2021 by Guest Blogger

“Instrument Interview” posts are a chance to sit down with the instruments of traditional, country, bluegrass, and roots music – from different types of instruments to specific ones related to artists, luthiers, and songwriters – and learn more about them. Ten questions are posed, and the instruments answer! Today we caught up with the jug, a very interesting instrument who had a lot to say about what it’s like to be in a jug band.

1. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I’m a jug that is used as an instrument. I play in a type of band that is called a jug band, but there are lots of other interesting instruments in these types of bands other than me. I’m a household object that was converted into a musical instrument.

2. Jugs are made to be containers, so how did you become an instrument?

I come from a long line of innovators. These are the type of creative people that make things from what they’ve got in their surroundings. Many early jug bands were made up of African American musicians from the world of vaudeville, musicians who performed in traveling medicine shows, and sometimes just people at home creating their own instruments. And jugs like me first started being recorded in jug bands in places like Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1920s and 1930s.

For some jug band musicians, perhaps they didn’t have the money for or access to instruments, and so they decided to pick up and modify things like jugs, washboards, spoons, and other things to make music to entertain themselves and their community. People have been making music out of everyday items and things they find just lying around for centuries.

Three Black musicians pose with their instruments. They all wear suits, the men to the left and right with bow ties and the middle man with either a normal tie or just his collar buttoned up. The man to the left wears a fedora-style hat, holds a banjo, and has a jug held towards his face by a "rack" around his neck. The middle man is seated and wears a fedora-style hat; he holds a guitar. The man to the right wears a flat cap and holds a harmonica. — Cannon’s Jug Stompers, a band formed by Gus Cannon with Noah Lewis and Ashley Thompson in the late 1920s. Supposedly Cannon first learned to play the banjo on an instrument he made from a frying pan and a racoon skin when he was a child. Image from Wikimedia Commons

3. Can any old jug be an instrument?

Sure! You can make music with any old milk jug or even something like a Snapple bottle, and I definitely encourage you to make music with anything you can find. Next time you find yourself with an empty bottle or jug, see how many ways you can make music with it. I promise it will brighten your day, and you won’t regret having a little fun making music. However, a jug is not much without the other instruments in the jug band.

4. How are you played?

There are multiple ways to play a jug. Since it wasn’t originally intended to be an instrument, there are far fewer rules on how to do it right so feel free to improvise! Lots of people think that to play a jug, you blow across the top of the opening like you’d play a flute, but there’s actually a lot more spit involved than that. You could do it that way, but normally in a jug band, players will buzz into a jug with their lips like you’d do to play the trumpet.

5. What do you sound like? And what about the band as a whole?

I make a sound that is kind of like a trombone-like tone, and it is often low on the musical scale. And the sound I make is also influenced by the material I am made of and my size. As a whole, a jug band typically plays music that sounds like a blend of blues, jazz, rag-time, and rock-and-roll. This is because jug bands were a precursor to all of these genres of music. Jug band music is a community and joy-based type of music, and since the instruments are so versatile and unique, it’s a great medium for innovation and creating new sound. This is how jug bands influenced the music from a variety of genres.

Three instruments hang on the back of a museum display case. The backing is blue. The top instrument is a small guitar made from a cigar box with a wooden neck. The middle instrument is a guitar made out of a circular ice bucket with a wooden neck. The bottom instrument is a large jug with a brown neck and shoulders and a cream body. — Various handmade and every day object instruments on display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. These include two guitars, one made from a cigar box and the other from an ice bucket, along with a jug used to make music. Photograph by Frank Kovalchek via Wikimedia Commons

6. What are the roles of the different instruments in a jug band?

The washboard, the bones, and the spoons provide percussion and rhythm for a jug band. The washtub base, the jaw harp, comb and tissue paper, some other modified stringed instruments, as well as the jug take the other places in a jug band. Some bands have just a few of these instruments, but others have many more depending on the sound that the band is trying to achieve. And often more “typical” instruments like the guitar or banjo are also included in the band. It’s a bit of a mix-and-match situation.

7. Why did people start making music with jugs?

People started to make music with jugs for the same reason everybody starts to make music – because they love it and wanted to come up with a way to entertain themselves and the people around them. This motivation based on love comes into the origin stories of just about all instruments. Even the simple ones like me. Throughout history, it has taken innovation and the creative use of ordinary objects and different materials to make music.

8. When instruments are more accessible today, why do people still play the jug? Why are you and other homemade instruments still relevant?

One reason that jug bands are still relevant is that the history of music is something that should be remembered and celebrated, and playing the music is one of the best ways to learn about it. Another way jug bands stay relevant is through modern music. Folk musicians and other musicians take inspiration from the unique sound of a jug band and adapt it to contemporary music. This brings a historical element to their music as well as a new and interesting sound. The main reason overall that a jug band and its instruments are still relevant is that the instruments are fun to play and listen to, and just about anyone can learn to play because a lot of the instruments are ones that you can find easily or make.

This photograph shows a band on a dark stage. The group is made up of six white musicians, including a woman with curly hair on guitar, a man with longish dark hair and a plaid shirt on harmonica, a man with a black shirt on washtub bass, a man in a tank top on drums, a man in a black shirt with the spoons, and a man wearing a hat and a plaid shirt on the washboard. — The Happy Fun Thyme Trouble Jug Band performing in 2019. At the far back left, you can see a washtub bass being played, while the two other musicians in the back of the group play the spoons and washboard. Image from Wikimedia Commons

9. How do homemade instruments like you fit into an Appalachian/Southern identity?

Both of these identities consist very much of holding things like community as a high priority. There’s not much people like to do more than get together and listen to music. Also, very important to a Southern and Appalachian identity is resilience in the face of adversity. In an area that struggles with poverty, the people are known for finding creative and innovative ways to do things like make music – and to produce wonderful instruments to help them do so!

10. Is there anything else you’d like to add about yourself?

Before I leave, I’d like to emphasize the importance of making music with whatever you find in your environment and doing it for fun. If it wasn’t for people looking around for ways to have a good time making music with things like jugs and seemingly silly household objects, we wouldn’t have the blues and rock music that we love today. So next time you feel like being silly and making music with a strange object, do it. You might just invent a new genre of music!

Gracie Osborne was an intern at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum this past summer, helping with curatorial work and visitor experience. She is an anthropology student at Radford University.

June Carter Cash: A Life in Country Music

History

June 23, 2021

Posted on June 23, 2021November 18, 2022 by Julia Underkoffler

Today – June 23 – is June Carter Cash’s birthday. At the age of 10, Valerie June Carter stepped in front of the mic for the first time with The Carter Family, and from there her role and legacy in the musical realm only grew stronger.

This image shows a senior class spread from a yearbook. June Carter is seen on the right-hand page in the bottom right of four student photographs. She is wearing a light colored top or dress. At the bottom of the picture is her autograph, which reads: "Luck, June Carter / Valerie June Carter Cash." To the left of the four photographs are the names of the students with their activities listed below their names. — Before she became a full-time performer and country music icon, June was your typical high school senior. This yearbook hinted at her musical career in the clubs and activities she participated in, including girls’ chorus and choir, but also in the later autograph she wrote on her senior portrait photograph after she was famous!

June Carter was born into the “first family of country music,” as one of three daughters of Ezra and Maybelle Carter, and she came into this world just two years after the famous 1927 Bristol Sessions, where The Carter Family recorded for the very first time. June lived the majority of her life in the spotlight – after the original Carter Family disbanded in 1943, she (at the age of 14), along with sisters Helen and Anita, began singing as part of the family’s professional act, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters. Even though they gained a lot of popularity under that name, Maybelle changed the band’s name to The Carter Family two years after A. P. Carter died in 1960. They released their first album, The Carter Family Album, on Liberty Records soon after. June also got a solo deal while preforming with the Carter Sisters.

The Carter Family Album cover is a reddish-orange color with a leather bound, old photograph album shown in the center. The photograph album is labeled with the record's title "The Carter Family Album" and has an oval picture of Mother Maybelle, June, Anita, and Helen in the center. — The cover of *The Carter Family Album* has the look of an old family photograph album.

June played many instruments including the harmonica, banjo, guitar, and autoharp. Not only did she have a solo career and a career with her family group, but she also had a career with her third husband, Johnny Cash. Together they won a Grammy in 1967 and 1970, and June also won three Grammys of her own, two of which she won after she passed away in 2003. That same year Country Music Television (CMT) included June on their “40 Greatest Women of Country Music” list.

June’s marriages connected to important musical legacies. Her first marriage was to Carl Smith, one of the most successful male country artists in the 1950s. Before June and Carl got divorced, they had one daughter, Rebecca Carlene, together. Today Carlene Carter is a singer-songwriter who is continuing the county music family legacy – her most recent album Carter Girl, is filled with three generations of Carter Family music. Carlene performed at the grand opening of the museum in 2014 too! You can read Carlene’s tribute to her mother on the blog here.

June married Johnny Cash, the “man in black” himself, in 1968, and they were together until June’s death in May 2003. June and Johnny were introduced to each other backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1965, though each of them was aware of the other through their music. In the years before they got married, June and Johnny performed and recorded together several times. June co-wrote “Ring of Fire,” which became one of Johnny’s most famous songs and topped the charts for seven weeks. Together Johnny and June had one son, John Carter Cash, who is also continuing the country music legacy of his family as a record producer and singer-songwriter.

Unlike her first and last unions, June’s second marriage – to Edwin “Rip” Nix – was not a marriage of two musical stars. Nix was a football player, racecar driver, and police officer, but their daughter Rosie also became a singer-songwriter. Sadly, she passed away in 2003, the same year as her mother, from carbon monoxide poisoning.

From the beginnings of the original Carter Family with Maybelle, Sara, and A. P. to June’s career as a country music icon to June’s children following in her and their grandmother’s footsteps, the lineage of Carter country musicians has strong roots and branches – a family born into, raised by, and innovating country music.

Julia Underkoffler is a summer intern at the Birthplace of Country Music. She is a rising senior at Shepherd University in West Virginia, majoring in historic preservation and public history and minoring in gender and women’s studies.

The Root of It: J. P. Harris on Roscoe Holcomb

History Radio

June 18, 2021

Posted on June 18, 2021October 19, 2021 by Guest Blogger

Radio Bristol is excited to share “The Root of It,” a blog series connecting today’s influential musicians to often lesser known and sometimes obscure musicians of the early commercial recording era. The sounds and musicians we hear today on platforms like Radio Bristol can often be traced back to the sounds of earlier generations. What better way to discover these connections than to talk to the musicians themselves about some of the artists that have been integral in shaping their music? These influences, though generally not household names, continue to inspire those who dig deep to listen through the scratches and noise of old 78s, field recordings, and more, finding nuances and surprises that inevitably lead them on their own unique musical journeys.

For this installment of “The Root of It,” we spoke with prolific songwriter and banjo player J. P. Harris. For years Harris has travelled internationally performing his unique take on honky tonk-flavored country music. Harris is also well versed in old-time music, spending much of his early years at fiddlers conventions where he delved headfirst into traditional old-time fiddle tunes and songs. His latest release on Freedirt Records – Don’t You Marry No Railroad Man – is a testament to the old-time influences that have inspired his music through the years. One of those influences is the East Kentuckian Roscoe Holcomb. One of those voices you just don’t forget after hearing him for the first time, Holcomb was also an incredibly gifted guitar and banjo player. He experienced international acclaim during the folk revival in part due to the documentary High Lonesome, which was shot by renowned artist and musician John Cohen. Harris spoke with Radio Bristol about the influence and inspiration the music of Roscoe Holcomb has had upon his own music.

A white man with close-cropped dark hair and a large dark beard sits in front of a table covered in fruit, vegetables, bread, and wine bottles -- set up very much like a Renaissance still life. He is wearing a white long-sleeve shirt and brown pants. His sleeves are slightly pushed up to reveal lots of tattoos. — Portrait of J. P. Harris by Libby Danforth.

J.P Harris:

As most Americans my age had, I’d heard little snippets of traditional American folk music over the course of my lifetime, but grew up removed from direct exposure to any of its subsets. As a teenager living and traveling on my own, often to far-flung corners of the country via hitchhiking or freight trains, my affinity for folk music and the stories therein grew immensely. And at this time, my interaction with the internet was virtually nonexistent, and it didn’t yet contain the endless well of digitized recordings, downloadable music, or streaming platforms we are so familiar with today.

As a result, I feel I grew into my taste in music in what was to be the last era of “oral tradition.” Amongst my community of friends and travelers, people traded dubbed cassettes, often with little or no information about the recordings, or maybe the occasional burnt copy of a CD. Oftentimes the label would simply read “blues” or “banjo music,” and we relied on our memories to retain any detail about who was playing, where they were from, and when it was recorded.

This is essentially the story of my introduction to Roscoe Holcomb (born 1912 as Halcomb in Daisy, Kentucky). A mix tape made by a friend arrived in the mail unlabeled, and one track in particular raised the hair on my arms and made me shudder at each vocal turn – so much so that eventually the track became garbled and nearly unlistenable from the repeated rewinding of that section of tape. I would later learn that the tune was “Darling Cory,” a song that became entrenched in my own repertoire.

A white man standing in front of an old wooden shed and ladder. He wears a light-colored hat, shirt, and pants, along with glasses, and holds a big-head banjo in his hands ready to play. Dark trees can also be seen in the background. — Roscoe Holcomb with banjo in Daisy, Kentucky, 1959. Bob Dylan described Holcomb as an artist with “a certain untamed sense of control.” Photo by John Cohen

However, it wasn’t until a few years later, in a local record store, that I once again heard that utterly unmistakable tone of voice and rushed to the clerk to ask what was playing on the house speakers. I purchased the album in question right then and there – An Untamed Sense Of Control from Smithsonian Folkways – and, for months, became lost in the lush landscape painted by Holcomb’s songs, hardly listening to anything else in my pickup as I drove to and from job sites each day, soaking up his many styles of guitar and banjo playing on the record.

Before discovering Roscoe Holcomb, I’d never heard an artist of his era playing such a diverse catalog of songs and styles, veering from a hymnal to the blues to dark mountain ballads. The variation in song style never left one guessing if it was still Holcomb singing, his voice plaintive and unrestrained. Learning of his life story (Holcomb worked as a road builder, farmer, coal miner, and finally as a full-time musician in his final years), my affinity only grew deeper – at the time, I was primarily working as a carpenter, logger, and heavy equipment operator. My musical tastes were a mix of early blues, early country, old time, and bluegrass, all of which you could hear Holcomb playing on any given album, and he became a sort of one-stop-shop for me for many years.

There are endless early professional or field recordings I could reference for the influences that still prevail in my own music career. Each one’s unique regional style or era-specific sound is a part of the intrigue of traditional American music, but none did I find where the musician had so obviously melded what they heard in a wider sense. Holcomb would at one turn play “Fair Miss In The Garden,” a ballad with obvious roots in 18th or even 17th-century British Isles traditions and common in Appalachia, then he would pivot to the bluesy “Frankie and Johnny,” a song so widespread that it would’ve been thought of as “pop music” during Hocomb’s youth in the 1920s and 1930s. This melding of styles surely gave me a new perspective on traditional music; before this, I had viewed them as altogether separate genres, unable to combine into the singer’s own personal stylistic interpretations.

White couple -- the woman is to the left and man to the right. She has dark hair and is wearing a white frilly-edged sleeveless shirt and dark pants/skirt; he is wearing a light-colored button-down shirt, big glasses, and a hat. He has one arm across her shoulders. They are standing in front of a white house. — Roscoe and wife Ethel Holcomb captured by the brilliant artist and New Lost City Rambler John Cohen.

It can only be assumed that Holcomb’s exposure to these other kinds of music not native to his rural Kentucky home came through his work in the mines and on construction crews, where likely both white and Black laborers from across the southeast were crossing paths and inadvertently sharing musical cultures, as evidenced by Holcomb’s “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues” or the instrumental “Knife Guitar.”

Although his music is no secret to most traditional enthusiasts (Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and The Stanley Brothers have all cited him on many occasions), Roscoe Holcomb remains to this day the first “gateway artist” I recommend to anyone trying to discover this largely unknown, yet vibrant, world of American music.

* To learn more about J. P. Harris or to check out his latest record Don’t You Marry No Railroad Man, releasing on June 25, visit www.ilovehonkytonk.com.

J. P. Harris’ Dreadful Wind and Rain featuring Chance McCoy with a nice rendition of “Mole in the Ground.”

Celebrate Record Store Day with History!

History Music & Songs

June 12, 2021

Posted on June 12, 2021October 19, 2021 by Guest Blogger

Record Store Day, celebrated on June 12, was established in 2007 to support independent and small business record stores, and it has become a highlight for the record-buying public. The height of record store popularity ranged from the 1950s to the 1980s, but wherever you purchase your music these days, it’s obvious that vinyl is having a resurgence in popularity. Taylor Swift recently broke a modern era record for vinyl sales in a single week. So, in celebration of Record Store Day, here’s a brief look at the history of recording records.

Customers browsing and buying records in a record store. Records are on display on a central table and in rows of boxes, while the walls are decorated with album covers, t-shirts, and a sign about Record Store Day. — Record Store Day 2014 at Drift Records in Totnes, United Kingdon. Photo by Sophie means wisdom, Wikimedia Commons

The first audio recording and playback machine was invented by Thomas Edison. It worked by carving the audio into a piece of metal foil wrapped around a cylinder. The original purpose of this invention, called the phonograph, was not for listening to music for pleasure but as a machine to record short notes for business meetings. Edison actually never thought of his invention as a means for music or entertainment, and these early cylinders certainly weren’t viewed as items for posterity – the recordings could only be played back a few times before they were too degraded to hear. Later, through the work of other inventors, cylinders began to be coated in wax, which provided a slightly better sound with more playbacks.

Emile Berliner improved upon this invention by converting the bulky and hard-to-store cylinders into flat discs. With the invention of these more durable discs, listening finally started to take the shape we now know and love. Berliner’s hand-cranked invention to listen to these discs was dubbed the gramophone, which is where the Grammy Awards get their name and their trophy gets its shape in honor of this piece of music-listening history.

Technology is always a story of constant evolution and, usually, improvement. Eldridge Johnson, a machinist who worked with Berliner to improve the gramophone, founded the Victor Talking Machine Company and began making and his own version of the playback machine, as well as producing 78 records that were made with a new and improved technique resulting in a higher quality sound. With changes in the recording technology – including the electric microphone and the electric amplifier – recorded music became more and more popular from the 1920s. And technology continued to develop over the years with a whole host of different record playing machines and changes in the format of records – from the early 78s to the later 33 1/3 and 45rpm records. The museum’s collections hold a multitude of the older 78s, while 33 1/3s, or LPs, are most widely sold now.

Left: A small Victrola phonograph on display at the museum. Top right: A cylinder player and cylinders. Botom right: A modern record player with a 45rpm record on it. Credits: © Birthplace of Country Music; photographer: Neil Staples; Photo by Petit Louis, Wikimedia Commons; Photo by Alan Levine, Wikimedia Commons

The invention of magnetic tape offered a clearer sound and portable listening, and record technology faded into the background, but the appeal of listening via records never quite died. A surge in popularity of record listening in the 1960s ushered in a golden age of records that lasted through the 1970s. And once again innovation came to the fore, influencing musical styles and techniques – for instance, in the 1980s and 1990s, hip hop artists created new and unique tracks from the sounds that were on the records using mixers and samplers.

In the past few years, a new wave in the popularity of vinyl has increased the appeal of owning and listening to music on records. Popular artists are releasing their albums on vinyl to be sold in record stores, big and small, as well as box stores with growing shelf space for these records. Record players are easy to find at affordable prices, and some of these modern players now offer multiple listening formats including cassette players, CD players, AUX jacks, and Bluetooth connection. This lets you listen to your music in just about any format you want.

Despite vinyl records not being as convenient as the common digital technology, there is something really special about owning the physical song etched into a disc and building a collection of your favorite albums – and it’s not just about the record itself, but also about the cover artwork and the liner notes. And so, embrace vinyl once again, and celebrate this Record Store Day by going out to your nearest record store and treating yourself to an addition to your collection – or starting one! Because even if it’s the first record you’ve ever bought or your 101st, there’s nothing quite like the first play of a new record.