Dink Roberts – FRC209

$15.00

African-American banjo player Dink Roberts (1894-1989) from Haw River, NC.

SKU: FRC209 Categories: , , ,

Description

(From the collection of Bob Winans)

In the mid-1970s, while I was researching and writing about the connections between minstrel banjo and clawhammer/frailing banjo, other researchers (Bruce Bastin, Kip Lornell, Cece Conway, Tommy Thompson, and Mike Seeger) had been discovering and recording African American banjo players. Early in 1978, feeling a need to gain first-hand knowledge of these banjoists, I embarked on a trip to interview and record a number of them, with the assistance of Kip and Cece who generously introduced me to players they had been working with. One of the most important of these African American banjo players was Dink Roberts (1894-1989), whom I recorded outside his home in Haw River, NC. His playing sounds noticeably different (among other things, more rhythmically complex, i.e., “syncopated,” for lack of a better term) than that of southeastern white banjoists contemporary with him, so much so that when I first heard recordings of his playing I mistakenly thought he did not know what he was doing. But further listening and then visiting him convinced me that he was fully in control of the musical effects he wished to create; he was just operating from a different aesthetic. His playing was, in the most positive sense, “archaic,” and an essential link to an earlier African American playing style (he learned from black banjoists born in the 1870s). Dink’s music is truly “roots music.” – Bob Winans

Additional Notes: Dink Roberts;           Wonderful photo by Peter B. Lowry

Track List

FRC209 – Dink Roberts

  1. Buffalo (1:17)
  2. Laid Poor Jesse in His Grave (1:45)
  3. Georgia Buck (1:14)
  4. Fox Chase (2:48)
  5. Unknown tune (1:22)
  6. Talk about dances (1:33)
  7. Talk about banjo styles (0:57)
  8. Old Corn Liquor (0:31)
  9. Talk about dances (0:35)
  10. Coo Coo Bird (0:49)
  11. Black Eyed Daisy (0:38)
  12. Talk about music sources (1:07)
  13. I Shall Not Be Moved (1:07)
  14. Black Annie (0:53)
  15. Buffalo (1:22)
  16. Talk about right hand (0:21)
  17. Buffalo – additional verses (0:32)
  18. Talk about banjo technique (0:22)
  19. Buffalo (1:02)
  20. Jump Jim Crow (0:25)
  21. Jump Jim Crow (0:27)
    Roustabout (0:40)
  22. John Hardy (1:00)
  23. John Hardy (0:53)
  24. Talk (0:29)
  25. John Henry (0:54)
  26. Talk about older musicians (0:06)
  27. Laid Poor Jesse in His Grave (1:36)
  28. Little Brown Jug (0:50)
  29. John Henry – James Roberts (0:54)
  30. Laid Poor Jesse in His Grave – James Roberts (0:50)
  31. Black Annie – James Roberts (0:57)
  32. John Henry – James Roberts (0:53)
  33. Coo Coo Bird (1:07)
  34. If You Don’t Like the Way I Do (2:13)
  35. James Roberts’ Tune – James Roberts (0:58)
  36. Buffalo – with talking (0:56)
  37. Buffalo (1:20)
  38. James Roberts’’ Tune – James Roberts (1:52)
  39. Motherless Child (1:17)
  40. Black Annie (0:42)
  41. Julie Got a Rambling Mind (0:38)
  42. Julie Got a Rambling Mind (1:05)
  43. Down to the Spring (1:09)
  44. Sitting on Top of the World (2:31)
  45. Sitting on Top of the World (0:41)
  46. Coming Round the Mountain (0:54)
  47. Fox Chase (0:38)
  48. Buffalo (1:38)