Jug Bands

A jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of conventional and homemade instruments. These homemade instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, bones, stovepipe, jew's harp, and comb and tissue paper. The term ''jug band'' is loosely used in referring to ensembles that also incorporate homemade instruments but that are more accurately called skiffle bands, spasm bands, or juke (or jook) bands (see juke joint) because they do not include a jug player.

History

Early jug bands were typically made up of African-American vaudeville and medicine show musicians. Beginning in the urban South (namely, Louisville, Kentucky, and Memphis, Tennessee), they played a mixture of blues, ragtime, and jazz. The history of jug bands is related to the development of the blues. The informal and energetic music of the jug bands also contributed to the development of rock and roll.

The jug sound is made by taking a jug (usually made of glass or stoneware) and buzzing the lips into its mouth from about an inch away. As with brass instruments, changes in pitch are controlled by altering lip tension, and an accomplished jug player could have a two-octave range. The stovepipe (usually a section of tin pipe, three or four inches in diameter) is played in much the same manner, with the pipe rather than the jug serving as the resonating chamber. There is some similarity to the didgeridoo, but there is no contact between the stovepipe and the player's lips. Some jug and stovepipe players utilize throat vocalization along with lip buzzing, as with the didgeridoo.

The swooping sounds of the jug fill a musical role halfway between the trombone and sousaphone or tuba in Dixieland bands, playing mid- and lower-range harmonies in rhythm.

In the early days of jug band music, homemade guitars and mandolins were sometimes made from the necks of discarded manufactured guitars fastened to large gourds that were flattened on one side, with a sound-hole cut into the flat side, before drying. Banjos were sometimes made from a discarded guitar neck and a metal pie plate.

Original bands

Jug bands from Louisville, Kentucky, were the first to record. The violinist Clifford Hayes's Old Southern Jug Band recorded as early as 1923. Whistler & His Jug Band, often making use of a nose whistle, first recorded in September 1924 for Gennett Records. Earl McDonald's Original Louisville Jug Band and Dixieland Jug Blowers were also among the first to record. The vaudeville-blues singer Sara Martin and "The Blue Yodeler", Jimmie Rodgers, both employed these bands for their recordings. Louisville bands often used whiskey jugs and were more jazz-oriented, a melding of string band and ragtime influences. Jug bands made street performances, played at parties, and began entertaining on riverboats on the Ohio River around 1900 and first appeared at the Kentucky Derby in 1903.

Jug bands from the Memphis area were more firmly rooted in country blues, hokum, and earlier African-American music traditions. Will Shade's Memphis Jug Band and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded for Ralph Peer, starting in 1927, many great songs that became the basis for the later jug band revival, including " Stealin'," "Jug Band Music," "On the Road Again," "Whoa, Mule," "Minglewood Blues," and "Walk Right In". Many songs had "blues" in the title, including "Coal Oil Blues" and "Lumpy Man Blues," but were not traditional 12-bar blues.

"The Memphis Jug Band and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers featured harmonica played by Will Slade and Noah Lewis, respectively. Other bands from the Memphis area were Jack Kelly and His South Memphis Jug Band, Jed Davenport and Dewey Corley's Beale Street Jug Band, and Noah Lewis's Jug Band. Ma Rainey's tub-jug band featured the first recordings of the slide guitarist Tampa Red, who later formed his own Hokum Jug Band. Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Minnie cut a few sides each backed up by their own jug bands; Memphis Minnie also sang and played with the Memphis Jug Band. Memphis jug band music is closely associated with Memphis blues.

The Cincinnati Jug Band recorded for Paramount Records in 1929, with Stovepipe No. 1 on the stovepipe.

The Seven Gallon Jug Band, including Clarence Williams on jug and Willie "The Lion" Smith on piano, recorded for Columbia Records in 1929.

The Birmingham Jug Band, including Jaybird Coleman and Big Joe Williams, and King David's Jug Band recorded for Okeh Records in 1930 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daddy Stovepipe and Mississippi Sarah recorded for Vocalion Records in 1931.

The 1930s depression and the devastating effect of radio on record sales reduced the output of jug band music to a trickle. The last sides by Cannon and the Memphis Jug Band were made in 1930 and 1934, respectively. Cannon and Will Shade were recorded again in 1956 by Sam Charters on a field trip for Folkways Records. The sound of the washboard and tub bass, however, lasted well into the 1940s as an integral part of the " Bluebird beat" in Chicago. Bukka White's " Fixin' to Die", recorded in Chicago in 1940, is driven by a syncopated washboard backup.

Revival

One of the first recordings of the folk era jug band revival was by the Orange Blossom Jug Five, ''Skiffle in Stereo'', made in 1958 for the poorly-distributed Lyrichord label. It was also the first recording by the New York folk singer Dave Van Ronk and featured Sam Charters, author of ''The Country Blues'', his wife Ann, as well as Len Kunstadt, co-owner of the Spivey Records label. Van Ronk would revisit the genre in 1964 with the album ''Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers'', though his ragtime guitar picking and repertoire influenced many subsequent jug bands. Another early recording group was Jolly Joe's Jug Band, led by the record collector Joe Bussard, and released on his own Fonotone label as 78 rpm records. Eventually these were collected on LP by Piedmont Records.

Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In" was a number 1 hit for the Rooftop Singers in 1963, the only time a jug band song topped the charts. These one-hit wonders even made an appearance at that year's Newport Folk Festival before fading into obscurity. The song's success brought Cannon himself back into the Stax Records studios in Memphis for his last recordings that same year at age 79. The album, ''Walk Right In'', features Cannon on banjo and his old friends Will Shade on jug and Milton Roby on washboard. The album consists of 13 of his old hits, with Cannon interjecting comments and telling stories about the songs. Also in 1963, Starday Records released ''The Original Talking Blues Man'', by Robert Lunn with Jug & Washboard Band.

This brief flurry of interest in the genre sparked the formation of a few jug bands that reached national prominence. The Jim Kweskin Jug Band of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which recorded for Vanguard Records, featured the washtub bass and jug player Fritz Richmond, who later played jug on Warren Zevon's "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." The New York-based Even Dozen Jug Band was Elektra Records' answer to the Kweskin band and featured, among others, Maria D'Amato, Joshua Rifkin, David Grisman, Stefan Grossman, John Sebastian