Banana Banjo
Banana Banjo
I wrote this song around 1968. It was meant to be exciting both musically and visually, with rapid chord changes that make the fingers chase up and down the neck. I ended up no playing it much on stage; I think the rhythm pushes made it hard for the audience to grasp. Now with this record, you can listen to it over, and over, and over, and over, and over. In the nineteen-sixties, after hearing a Felix Slatkin arrangement of John Henry on the banjo backed by orchestral strings, a concept unmentionable in today’s advanced banjo world, I believed there was an appropriate combination of violins and the five-string. John McEuen attacked the idea with glee. I will let you be the judge, though you’re not allowed to be too harsh or you will be punished.