HappyFriday Obots!
I always thought there was a difference in the instrument known as the violin and the instrument known as the fiddle. Guess what? There isn’t. Its the same instrument, the difference is simply in what you’re playing. Fiddlers play folk, country and blues.
American vernacular music, especially in the South, has been shaped by this rich interplay of black and white over a period of three centuries, beginning when Africans were first exposed to European instruments aboard the slave ships that brought them to the New World. Slave fiddling in the American colonies was documented as early as the 1690s, and during the 18th century black fiddlers became as prevalent on Southern plantations as black banjo players. Over time, the traditions of Africa and Europe meshed in a complex chemistry to create uniquely American music. Together, the European violin and the African banjo would become the predominant folk instruments of the American South in the 19th century- a testament to the integration of two musical cultures.
In the antebellum South, slave fiddlers provided music at plantation balls and other entertainments for whites, and were often encouraged by their masters to play for the dancing of fellow slaves as well. Black musicians absorbed the polkas, marches, jigs and reels of the European tradition, but applied syncopated rhythms and minor tonalities derived from Africa. They were often granted privileges denied to field slaves, including a chance to travel when their services were required at other venues. Solomon Northup, a free man from New York who was kidnaped and sold into slavery in Louisiana, later described how his ordeal was mitigated by his ability to play the fiddle. In his book Twelve Years A Slave, published in 1853, Northup wrote:
“Alas! had it not been for my beloved violin, I scarcely can conceive how I could have endured the long years of bondage. It introduced me to great houses- relieved me of many days’ labor in the field- supplied me with conveniences for my cabin- with pipes and tobacco, and extra pairs of shoes, and oftentimes led me away from the presence of a hard master, to witness scenes of jollity and mirth. It was my companion- the friend of my bosom triumphing loudly when I was joyful, and uttering its soft, melodious consolations when I was sad. It heralded my name around the country- made me friends, who, otherwise would not have noticed me- gave me an honored seat at the yearly feasts, and secured the loudest and heartiest welcome of them all at the Christmas dance.”
Lonnie Johnson was born in Orleans Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana in 1899 and raised in a family of musicians. He studied violin, piano and guitar as a child, and learned to play various other instruments including the mandolin, but concentrated on the guitar throughout his professional career. “There was music all around us,” he recalled, “and in my family you’d better play something, even if you just banged on a tin can.”
By his late teens, he played guitar and violin in his father’s family band at banquets and weddings, alongside his brother James “Steady Roll” Johnson. He also worked with jazz trumpeter Punch Miller in the city’s Storyville district.
In 1917, Johnson joined a revue that toured England, returning home in 1919 to find that all of his family, except his brother James, had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic.
In 1925, Johnson entered and won a blues contest at the Booker T. Washington Theatre in St. Louis, the prize being a recording contract with Okeh Records.
When Lonnie Johnson exclaimed, “Violin, sing the blues for me!” during a recording session for Okeh Records in 1928, he was in top form, performing with passion and artistry on the instrument that was his first love- the fiddle. By the time Johnson recorded his Violin Blues, he was already one of the most prolific and influential musicians in the field of blues, an African-American musical form then dominated by guitar players, just as it is today. Johnson himself led a long and illustrious career as a guitarist, and is primarily remembered for his dazzling mastery of that instrument. But it was the violin that first captured his imagination, and his early career in New Orleans was spent honing his skills as a fiddler, first in his father’s string band, then as a young professional performing on excursion boats along the Mississippi. Johnson played violin on nearly two dozen early recordings. There’s no doubt that his fiddling played a significant role in the early history of recorded blues, even if it was soon eclipsed by guitar. The violin is by nature a lead instrument that can replicate vocal expressions through the use of vibrato and sliding notes, techniques that Johnson developed on the fiddle and later applied to guitar, creating the interplay of voice and instrument that is a prime ingredient of the blues.
The rural string band the Mobile Strugglers got started just as the major record companies began to lose interest in string bands. The group featured two fiddlers, Charles Jones and James Fields, and included guitarist Paul Johnson, banjo picker Lee Warren and Wesley Williams on double bass. The Mobile Strugglers recorded songs, including “Memphis Blues,” for Bill Russell’s American Music label in 1949.
“I got the name of being a pretty good fiddle player,” Joe Thompson once said. “I even been to Carnegie Hall playing fiddle.”
Joseph Aquilla Thompson was born on Dec. 9, 1918, on a farm near Mebane, N.C., where he lived most of his life. His career also included playing at the Kennedy Center in Washington and at folk festivals from coast to coast, including one at the Smithsonian. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a National Heritage Fellowship. And he is credited with helping to keep alive an African-American musical tradition — the black string band — that predates the blues and influenced country music and bluegrass.
Joe died on March 1, 2012. You can read more of his incredible talent here.
Read more on the history of African-American Fiddlers as compiled by Old Hat Records.