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Steve Martin used to joke about it how you can’t play a sad song on the banjo. Then he’d play a stereotypical sad blues tune on the banjo and crack everyone up. At the time I remember joking about banjo blues with friends. The joke was on me though. In fact the banjo is a blues instrument and the sound can be beautiful and mournful at the same time.

Robert Palmer’s excellent book Deep Blues documents the instrument and the word banjo back to an African tribe known as the Wolof. The Wolof people were commonly captured as slaves and brought to the southern United State in the days of the slave trade and were a great influence in the evolution of southern music. Palmer also documents other influential instruments brought over from Africa as well as the fact the guitar did not come into common use for blues until the 1920s. Before then and especially early in the evolution of the blues the banjo was a much more commonly heard instrument.

For the history buff here is an excellent video by Mike Seeger showing what those early banjos looked and sounded like.

I don’t want to start the ongoing debate regarding frailing vs clawhammer style playing but suffice to say that playing the banjo’s drone string in a driving rhythmic style, or alternating bass note picking, and plucking of the other strings in a finger picking style are common techniques in acoustic blues that may be inherited from the banjo influence on the blues.

Unfortunately there are a limited number of banjo picking blues players but Reverend Gary Davis was good enough to leave a legacy of recordings so sit back and enjoy these previews courtesy of Amazon.com

Here are a couple more youtube videos for blues fans who enjoy banjo picking:
Twelve Bar Blues – by Brendan Kelly on Banjo

Banjo Blues – BluesBeaten Redshaw

And for the musicians here is a “Frailing The Blues Lesson One”

If there are any visitors out there who know of other banjo playing blues artists I’d love to hear from them.