It Came From the Basement: Uncle George's Banjo

Welcome to a new series with which I'm trying to reinvigorate the DaveTronik 2000 blog. In these posts, I will write about an item or items currently stored in the unfinished side of my basement. Many of them have been stashed in boxes for decades, waiting for this moment.

Was George Brigham a banjo master like Bela Fleck, Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Roy Clark and Steve Martin?

Perhaps. But my uncle, who was born in 1924 and died in 2008, never let on if he was able to pick and grin with the best of them. I recall, as a kid, seeing his banjo in the basement of my cousins' house in West Hartford, Connecticut, and wondering whose it was. I never saw my uncle, or anyone else, play it.

My cousins were curious about George's banjo-pluckin', too. "I remember seeing that banjo at home and asking him to play it," my cousin Sue remembers. "He never would."

"I just remember him saying he took '52 lessons for 52 dollars' and I never heard him play!" my cousin Amy recalls. Her twin, Joy, agrees. "As Amy said, he didn’t play it for us, and seemed almost dumbfounded that he learned it after 52 lessons."

Fifty-two lessons! I'm not sure if that's once a week for a year, but regardless, that's plenty of time to learn how to play "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" with some flair. Below is a video that is oh-so-appropriate, as it features Steve Martin, Earl Scruggs, Pete Wernick and other banjo masters on the David Letterman show. Letterman always reminded me a bit of my Uncle George, even though he's nearly a quarter-century younger.

Notice that each of the banjoists is playing a five-stringed instrument, known as a clawhammer banjo. Uncle George's is a four-string piece, known as a tenor banjo. Evidently, the four-stringers are used more in jazz and Dixieland music, as opposed to country and bluegrass.

What sort of music might Uncle George have played on his banjo? "Not recalling hearing Dad plucking away," my cousin Ann says. "I always liked having a Banjo in the Basement!" Her sister, Lynne, tells me that she "never heard it played. Would have loved to!"

George liked to play tennis; he and my dad had regular Saturday morning games when I was a kid. My dad loved to sing and act in community theater shows, but he never learned to play an instrument (well, he did take guitar lessons for a short time). I don't believe their younger brother, Bill, did either.

When my uncle passed away, Amy and Joy bequeathed his banjo to me, along with old photo albums and scrapbooks. I hoped that I might be able to learn how to play it, since I have been a guitarist since I was 14 years old. I asked a friend (check out his tattoo shop if you're ever in Newton, Mass., and need some ink) who is a fantastic musician if he knew where I could get the banjo checked out. He suggested Sandy's Music in Cambridge.

So I headed to Sandy's shop in Central Square. He (or someone in his shop) looked over the banjo, examining the bridge, the rim, the tuning pegs, the frets, the neck and the head. He noticed a crack in the neck, and said if I wanted to get it fixed, they could certainly do it.

For about two hundred bucks....

"I don't know how to play it," I said. "You could hang it on the wall," he replied.

Sandy's, which opened in 1970, closed in 2013. The space along Massachusetts Avenue is now occupied by Mike's Monster Guitar, which is run by Mike Feudale, who worked at Sandy's as lead repairman for 18 years.

I haven't hung the banjo on the wall, but it's on a rack in the music area of my basement, next to a ukelele that my wife bought several years ago, a three-string slide guitar that my in-laws gave me for Christmas, and above the case that holds my grandfather's accordion.