Banjo Hybrids
Copyright © 2006 Shlomo Pestcoe. All rights reserved.
In the last decades of the 19th century, the 5-string banjo had to vie for its place in the spotlight with its cousins in the lute family-- the ubiquitous guitar and the up-and-coming mandolin. While the guitar always had a preeminent role in the fashionable musical culture of the middle and upper classes, it really didn't come into its own in popular music-making until the 1880s when the American musical instrument industry began to mass manufacture and market sturdier, more affordable models. The '80s also marked the rise of the Neapolitan bowl-back mandolin to the status of a major pop instrument in America and the world over.
Just as amateur banjoists formed banjo clubs and orchestras to perform light classical and the pop dance music of the day, mandolin and guitar clubs and orchestras-- as well as mixed ensembles featuring all three instruments-- sprang up on college and university campuses and in communities across America. This period also saw the introduction of the guitar and mandolin into the various regional/ethnic folk traditions, taking their places alongside the fiddle and 5-string banjo as the preferred string instruments for vernacular music-making. As a result a new type of vernacular musical ensemble emerged, the string band.
Seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, some of the more enterprising banjo makers began to create hybrids which featured different instrument necks mounted on banjo "pots" (drum-like bodies). This was a stroke of marketing genius: now those who played other string instruments like the guitar or mandolin could have the distinctive plunk and greater volume of the banjo without having to learn a whole new instrument.
The Banjo-Guitar
The guitar was the first and most obvious candidate to be mated with the banjo in Frankenstein-esque hybridization. From the 1840s on, many 5-string banjo players and makers had sought to make their instrument more like the most popular fretted string instrument of the 19th century, the guitar. This yearning culminated with the eventual creation in the 1880s of the banjo-guitar -- a banjo with a regular 6-string guitar neck tuned in standard guitar tuning, EADGBE.
While the invention of this instrument is credited to New York City banjo maker Edmund Clark in 1884, earlier attempts at creating a synthesis of the banjo and guitar date back to the mid-19th century. One example was the Dolce Campana Guitar-Banjo, patented on October 18, 1859 by Stephen F. Van Hagan of Albany, NY. The unique feature of Van Hagan's instrument was a fretted 7-string neck-- in effect, a regular 6-string guitar neck with the addition of a short "thumb string" like that of a 5-string banjo. It also had a distinctive banjo drum-like body formed into a teardrop shape rather than the typical round circle.
By 1890, most American and English banjo makers offered 7-string models in addition to the standard 5-string instruments. The 7-string form of the banjo seems to have been especially popular in Great Britain.
The Banjo-Mandolin
Another popular hybrid was the banjo-mandolin (also banjolin, banjoline, and banjorine), a small banjo with a mandolin neck. Like a mandolin, it typically has 8 strings arranged in 4 courses (pairs of strings), tuned GDAE, and is played with a flat-pick.
The banjo-mandolin should not to be confused with the Pollmann Mandoline-Banjo, a unique instrument, patented by yet another NYC maker August Pollmann in 1887, which featured a standard 5-string banjo neck grafted on to a large flatback mandolin body. Unlike the banjo-mandolin, the Pollmann Mandoline-Banjo was tuned and played as a regular 5-string banjo. This was yet another attempt to make the banjo more "genteel." The idea here was to give the instrument a mellower and sweeter timbre so as to be more suitable to the "refined" tastes of the Upper Crust as well as "Professionals, Dramatists and Musical Artists." In fact, Pollmann advertised it as "The New Society Instrument." And the Mandoline-Banjo did meet with some success in its targeted market, as evidenced by testimonials like the following: "Dear Sir.-- I have noticed that the attention given by Banjoists, especially ladies, to your Mandoline-Banjo is steadily on the increase. Sacramento, California, December 23, 1893. C.A. Neale." However, by the close of the 19th century, the instrument was no longer being produced and it subsequently became something of a musical curiosity. In recent years, a leading American manufacturer Gold Tone has revived the Mandoline-Banjo concept with its own version of the instrument, the Banjola.
The Banjo-Ukulele
Shortly after the introduction of the Hawaiian ukulele to the mainland at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, a banjoid version of the uke appeared that wedded a ukulele neck to a banjo pot-- the banjo-ukulele or banjulele.
There was even the banjo-violin, a bowed banjo with a fiddle neck which, mercifully, never really caught on.
-- Shlomo Pestcoe
Illustration Credits:
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A string band featuring banjos and mandolins of various vintages and makes. Scranton, PA, circa 1920. The instrumentation from left to right is: trap drum set, banjo-mandolin, 5-string banjo (possibly made by W.A. Cole of Boston), banjo-mandolin, and a Vega "Tu-ba-phone" banjo-guitar. The instruments displayed at the players feet include: guitar (possibly a Stahl "Tree of Life" guitar made by the Larson Brothers of Chicago), a very early Gibson A-4 mandolin that was made between 1902 and 1908, a 5-string banjo, and a Gibson Alrite/Style D mandolin which was only made in 1917.
