It’s not jazz any more than those pop songs were when they were written, but the banjo players sure do enjoy themselves.

There are still banjo clubs in just about every city where ten or twenty or more folks get together to play those tunes on plectrum and tenor banjos. The four string banjo was the common accompaniment for those tunes and remained so in the pizza parlors of the fifties and later and in other venues that did and still do feature ragtime-influenced old pop songs. This last tune was obviously not composed in Tin Pan Alley, but the influence is clear. Think “I’m Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover,” 1927, revived in 1948. Think “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” (aka “Five Foot Two”), 1925. Think “Play a Simple Melody,” 1913, revived in 1950. In the twenties and thirties that influence was just about total.

Meanwhile, ragtime music had taken over Tin Pan Alley, and its influence on popular music continues to this day. Plectrum banjos became the standard stringed instrument in trad jazz bands along with tenor banjos, which are tuned just like violas and have an even higher and sharper tone than do plectrum banjos. A five string banjo without the fifth string and fifth peg is called a plectrum banjo. If you look at photos of the earliest trad bands, you see some six-string banjos and some five-string banjos, presumably with the fifth string removed. And if you can’t bang on it, how will you be heard against the horns? The answer was the four-string banjo, but they were not yet very common. So a six-string banjo has to be played very carefully and not just strummed as can be done with a guitar. And the more strings that are played at one time, the more those overtones interfere with each other. Each note played on a banjo has overtones that don’t appear when a guitar is played. Cyr and Clancy Hayes among them, played six string banjos that they made themselves or had made for them. Some of the earliest and best known of the trad players, Johnny St. So the guitar players played six string banjos tuned and played like guitars. One of my traditional jazz musician friends has a sign in his jamming room that says, “If you can’t hear the piano, you’re playing too loud.” Well, banjos sure are louder than guitars, but the drone fifth string gets in the way of the many chords used in ragtime and traditional jazz.

Ragtime artists