David G. Hyatt - Gourd Banjos

It is difficult to document gourd banjos in the mountains because early banjos were home made. A gourd banjo, therefore, did not excite curiosity - it was just another hand made instrument. There are, however, a few sightings and descriptions of gourd banjos. Jim Fee, an outstanding bluegrass pioneer in the Orlando area of Florida, grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky. He was playing bluegrass on a local radio station in Harlan by 1956. He saw a gourd banjo in Harlan County when he was a boy. He didn't observe it closely because it was "just another old banjo."

Ed Haggard reported seeing a gourd banjo in Winchester, Kentucky, between 1953 and 1956. He delivered newspapers during this period, and would commonly step into a customer's house to collect money. The hallway of one house had a gourd banjo and a fiddle hanging side by side.

Larry N. Bare, who grew up in Perry County, Kentucky, saw a gourd banjo played in the mid-1940s at a pie supper and dance at the Mudlick School, which was near the head of Grapevine Creek. He worked at Homeplace on Troublesome Creek in Perry County. Dances were held at the community house, where local people would on occasion bring musical instruments to play. He saw a gourd banjo played there in late 1950 or early 1951. Mr. Bare did not at that time consider a gourd banjo unusual, because most banjos in that area were home made.

Jean Thomas describes banjo making in Devil's Ditties, published in 1931:

"If a fiddle were not to be had, a man could, if he were so minded, make a banjo with a pine or cedar for the neck, a coon skin or fox hide stretched tight over a hickory hoop for a sounding board, or he could even use a long necked squash for that purpose."

Thomas also describes a banjo made from a gourd in Ballad Makin' in the Mountains of Kentucky:

"The rounded side had been cut away and the opening covered with a scrap of brown paper made fast with flour paste. The strings were of wire."

There is a photo of a lady and a small boy with a gourd banjo in Ballad Makin'; the caption of the photo is Lady Elizabeth and Little Robin.

Thomas began the American Song festival in 1931. Some of the festival performances may be heard on Folkways CD F-2358, entitled American Song Festival, which can be ordered from Smithsonian Folkways. The liner notes of the CD have a photo of a young lad sitting on stage with his gourd banjo. There is better photo of the same young boy with his gourd banjo in Alan H. Eaton's book, Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. The caption reads as follows: Babe Caldwell, Youngest Ballad Singer in the American Song Festival, Plays a 'Gourd Banjer' made by his 'Grandsir.

Leonard Roberts, a Kentucky folklorist, published the songs and tales of an east Kentucky family in Sang Branch Settlers (a more abridged version was published in Up Cutshin & Down Greasy). He interviewed the Couch family in the early 1950s. Jim Couch related:

"My grandfather made one [banjo] that lasted for years. The box of it was made outten an old gourd. The strings was connected some way up the neck, and that thing played right good, I thought."

Roberts also interviewed Jim's father, Tom Couch, a banjo player born in 1860. Tom said one of his forbears started the tradition of picking and singing by making himself a banjo from an old gourd. It would seem from Tom Couch's statement that his family had been making gourd banjos for at least two or three generations prior to 1860. The ancestors of Tom Couch moved to eastern Kentucky from North Carolina and southwest Virginia.