EPISODE · Sep 1, 2012
Old Man River
from Banjo Hangout Top 100 Jazz Songs · host Jerome Kern
The iconic song from "Showboat", originally sung by Paul Robeson in the Broadway play and then covered by everyone from Djanjo Reinhardt to Frank Sinatra. (Frank Sinatra???) My version is an homage to both John Jorgenson -who first really turned me on to Jazz- and his then partner in crime Doug Mattocks -who showed me that you could play *anything* on the banjo if you only wanted to badly enough... And this is one of those wonderful tunes where you don't have to play things at high speed or with a lot of bells and whistles to make it sound good: just play the melody and let the music speak for itself. Recorded on my Vega Whyte Laydie in open G tuning.
What this episode covers
The iconic song from "Showboat", originally sung by Paul Robeson in the Broadway play and then covered by everyone from Djanjo Reinhardt to Frank Sinatra. (Frank Sinatra???) My version is an homage to both John Jorgenson -who first really turned me on to Jazz- and his then partner in crime Doug Mattocks -who showed me that you could play *anything* on the banjo if you only wanted to badly enough... And this is one of those wonderful tunes where you don't have to play things at high speed or with a lot of bells and whistles to make it sound good: just play the melody and let the music speak for itself. Recorded on my Vega Whyte Laydie in open G tuning.
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Old Man River
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