The first white banjo players learned to play by apprenticing themselves to enslaved musicians. This cultural crossover probably took place many times in the early nineteenth century though few of these players became professionals. It can be said with certainty that four of them brought the banjo into America’s mainstream.

Joel Walker Sweeney (1810-1860), the best known among the first white banjoists, learned the instrument from his father’s slaves and was playing it as early as 1831. His brother Sam and cousin Richard Sweeney also played banjo and no doubt benefited from knowing the slave-musicians of their hometown, Appomattox, Virginia. Sam became banjo player for the Confederate cavalry general J. E. B Stuart during the Civil War.

Early-on Joel Sweeney performed on court days and other occasions when crowd’s gathered, traveling around the area with a horse and buggy. Later he traveled Virginia and North Carolina with a small circus and eventually appeared in New York City and England. There, with the Virginia Minstrels, Sweeney played a command performance for Queen Victoria. In appreciation, the Queen presented him with a money belt full of gold coins.

New Yorker William Whitlock (1813-1878) was traveling with a circus as a singer when his path crossed with that of Joel Sweeney. They were together long enough for Whitlock to pick up the banjo. Later Whitlock apparently tapped directly into African-American folk traditions. He claimed that by careful observation he acquired “his accurate knowledge of the peculiarities of plantation and cornfield Negroes.” Whitlock said, “every night during his journey south, when he was not playing, he would quietly steal off to some Negro hut to hear the darkeys sing and see them dance taking with him a jug of whiskey to make them all the merrier.”

In 1839 Whitlock, “the King of Banjo players and the Emperor of Extravaganza Singers,” accompanied the great blackface dancer John Diamond in productions organized by P. T. Barnum. In 1843 his banjo playing led the performances of the Virginian Minstrels. This was America’s first minstrel troupe, a prototype of today’s rock bands.

Dan Emmett (1815-1903) probably learned to play fiddle as a boy in Mount Vernon, Ohio. There he may have enjoyed some cultural crossover by associating with a neighboring family of free blacks who later made up a popular local social orchestra--the Snowdon Family Band. Later, though underage, he enlisted in the US Army as a fifer and drummer.

By 1840 Emmett was performing as a drummer for the Cincinnati Circus Company on a southern tour. Along the way he met a banjo player named Ferguson. Little is known of this man. C. J. Rogers, the circus manager who hired Ferguson as a roustabout said, he “was a very ignorant person and ‘nigger all over’ except in color.” This was no insult for men who were soon to ignite the entertainment world with their blackface imitations of southern slaves. Before the year was out Ferguson had developed an act with the singer and dancer Frank Brower. They were the hit of the tour.

Ferguson hailed from western Virginia, where he would have had ample opportunity to learn to play the banjo from African Americans. Emmett was a quick study. On the next year’s tour he was playing “Old Tare River” on banjo accompanied by Frank Brower on bones. Soon Emmett took up the fiddle and, with Brower, combined with Bill Whitlock on banjo and Dick Pell on tambourine to form the Virginia Minstrels. Ferguson’s fate is lost to history.

These were true folk musicians who learned their art through direct oral transmission. By the early 1840s their music was available everywhere as sheet music and their combination of African and European traditions was no longer folk music. It was the engine of a thriving pop music industry that turned a profit entertaining the masses. When Tom Briggs’ Banjo Instructor appeared in 1855, the banjo technique that Ferguson and Sweeney had discovered in the obscurity of the slave quarters was available to the whole world.

We have the original instruments that were played by these men. Their musical notation and technique are in hand as well. So, with study, it is possible to accurately recreate music that was heard in America 160 years ago. This makes for exhilarating entertainment.

Below is a list of publications that describe and teach the minstrels’ banjo technique. This is very different from the modern methods of bluegrass and frailing. So if you want to play like they did when the banjo was new, take care of the following few details.

First, get a minstrel banjo. This is much different from a modern instrument. Made of wood and skin and gut, it has no tone ring or mechanical tuners. It does have five strings like a modern banjo (though these are made of sheep gut) and may have a few metal brackets for tightening the goatskin head, but it has no frets on the neck. These features combined with its lower tuning give this banjo its antebellum sound. Quality reproductions are available at reasonable prices. Write to me by e-mail and I’ll direct you to some people who build such instruments. My email address is minstrel@danpartner.com.

Second, if you currently play banjo, have a mind to forget everything you know about how to play the instrument. Frailing styles emerged out of this early technique, but this is not frailing. It bears no resemblance to bluegrass playing because there is no up-picking involved with the minstrel’s method. The method taught in Briggs’ Banjo Instructor and other early manuals is now called “stroke style.” But back then it was simply called “playing the banjo.” It is much easier to play in the minstrel’s way if you’ve never before played banjo because you won’t have to resist the urge to mix modern riffs and licks with the original method.

Also, find someone who knows how to play this way and ask them to show you how. It is relatively simple and the technique is easily passed along. Some folks who play in modern frailing styles write off the minstrels’ method as simple and primitive--merely a precursor to real banjo playing. This is hardly true. So be sure you learn from someone who owns a minstrel banjo, a copy of Briggs’ manual, and can read from it.

Resources do exist for self-teaching, so don’t be deterred if no one is around to tutor you. The best place to start is with Briggs’ Instructor. It uses standard musical notation, so this gives you a good excuse to learn the rudiments of reading music, which is not hard. In fact, Briggs’ teaches this. It also brings together about fifty different tunes of the day. Original music and lyrics can also be found on a few web sites. Send me e-mail and I’ll send you the URLs. I think the use of primary sources enables one to better understand and play this music.

Ayers, Joseph W., ed. Briggs’ Banjo Instructor. Bremo Bluff, Virg.: Tuckahoe Music.
A reprint of the first complete banjo instruction method, published in1855. This book was invaluable to me as I learned to play banjo in the minstrel style. I use it still today. A companion cassette tape is available. Mr. Ayers has performed a great service to the world of early popular music by reprinting this and the four books below.

Ayers, Joseph W., ed. Buckley’s New Banjo Book. Bremo Bluff, Virg.: Tuckahoe Music.
A reprint of a banjo method published in 1860. A companion cassette tape is available.

Ayers, Joseph W., ed. Frank Converse’s Banjo Without a Master. Bremo Bluff, Virg.: Tuckahoe Music.
A reprint of a banjo method published in 1865. Although I use Brigg’s Instructor most often, I used this book to learn Arkansas Traveler and still use it for hints on other tunes. A companion cassette tape is available.

Ayers, Joseph W., ed. Phil Rice’s Correct Method for the Banjo. Bremo Bluff, Virg.: Tuckahoe Music.
A reprint of a banjo method published in 1858. A companion cassette tape is available.

Ayers, Joseph W., ed. Howe’s Complete Preceptor of the Banjo. Bremo Bluff, Virg.: Tuckahoe Music.
A reprint of the earliest banjo instructor first published in 1851. This booklet is not much help in learning minstrel-style banjo, but it does contain well-known early banjo numbers like “Old Jaw Bone” and “Old Tar River.”

Flesher, Bob. Learning Minstrel Banjo. Moreno Valley, Calif.: Dr. Horsehair Music.
An introductory instruction manual with a brief history of the banjo and the tablature to twenty-five early minstrel songs.

Flesher, Bob. The Minstrel Banjo Stroke Style. Moreno Valley, Calif.: Dr. Horsehair Music.
An instruction manual with sixty songs taken from the original banjo instructors, written in tablature. Cassette tape or CD is included with book.

Weidlich, Joseph. Minstrel Banjo: Brigg’s Banjo Instructor. Anaheim: Centerstream Publishing, 1997.
The author gives modern explanations, tablature, and performance notes for sixty-eight songs from Briggs’ Banjo Instructor, 1855. A companion cassette tape is available.

Weidlich, Joseph. More Minstrel Banjo: Frank Converse’s Banjo Instructor. Anaheim: Centerstream Publishing, 1997.
The second book in a three-part series of intabulations of music for the minstrel banjo. The music in this volume comes from Frank Converse's Banjo Instructor, Without a Master, 1865. A companion cassette tape is available.