In the G Burns Jug Band, I perform a mix of blues, hillbilly, and early jazz music from the 1920s and 1930s. It’s a collection that some would refer to as “pre-war music” (referring to World War II). This is a particularly special era for lovers of folk and traditional music because it was a time in which record companies first began scouting for talented musicians in rural and lower-class parts of the country. Before this, recording companies relied on the talents of trained urban musicians in cities like New York, and they catered to the tastes of the upper classes: classical music or tin pan alley songs written out by professional composers. When recording technology advanced enough to be portable, scouts began venturing into Southern cities and remote rural regions. They recorded local musicians playing in styles unique to their own regions, and as a result, a lot of “unusual” music was recorded. Instead of operatic singers performing the works of Puccini, or slick crooners singing cute numbers about falling in love, companies were recording mountain musicians that had built their own banjos from kitchen pots and the hides of family pets, and used them to sing centuries-old ballads about murdering your lover. They also recorded, to provide another example, jug bands.
I’m guessing a good many of the folks reading this have never heard a jug band, or even heard of a jug band. In the broadest sense, a jug band can be any band which uses a ceramic jug as a bass instrument. Technically, the jug is a wind instrument because the player buzzes their lips and blows into the jug, using it as a resonator. By adjusting their embouchure, or the tenseness of their lips, the player creates a musical tone resembling an upright bass being bowed with a weedwacker. In the pre-war era, the instrument was most popular in Southern African American string bands, where it was combined with guitars, mandolins, banjos, and fiddles, and even clarinets, saxophones, cornets, and tubas.
In September of this year, the G Burns Jug Band was invited to Louisville, Kentucky to perform at the National Jug Band Jubilee (yes, it’s a thing). It was a special invitation because of Louisville’s historic importance to jug band history, which I’ll describe later, but also because I am a 5th generation Kentuckian. All of my family is there, and Louisville played an important role in shaping my early musical life. The band decided to book a few dates before the Jubilee and visit a few other towns. What follows is a town-by-town report that I wrote for our band newsletter, detailing the trip.
