Click
here for a PDF version suitable for printingINTERVIEW WITH JOE THOMPSON (with Bob Carlin)
Videotaped at the Black Banjo Gathering, April 2005, Boone, NC.
MARC FIELDS: You mentioned last night that your brother Nate was a tough man with the banjo…
JOE THOMPSON: My brother... He was playing a dance, and people said he's pickin' it. My father said you can't pick no banjo playing for no dance. Them guys cut up there sometimes, you got to play music. You got to get out there, play this banjo, you got to clawhammer this banjo. So when he learned my brother how to play the banjo, my daddy took my brother's left hand, and he taped his left hand up, wrapped it all up, so he couldn't use his hand. Then he'd take this hand and put it on the banjo, and he clawhammered for 2 weeks. But when he [my brother] come back he was bad. He was a tough man with that banjo.
Clawhammer—see it's different clawhammer and pickin' a banjo. So my brother was a tough man with that banjo... He [his father] got a banjo there and taught Nate how to play that banjo. And he just taught him and taught him, and had him settin' up on his lap, teaching him, what move to make, what notes to take. And there's a whole lot to playing music. The main thing is you got to want to do it. You got to have it in your head, I want to do this. Can't be shabby to do it, got to put on a clean pair of pants, creased up.
I remember he [his brother] came home one day and he said I got to check something. I heard these boys playing a piano, they play this thing called Wabash Cannonball. We had never played nothing like that. So he heard it. He heard this tune then he'd come and he'd play it. Now I'd be working in the garden, plowing the tractor. While I was working the garden some of the tunes I liked come to my ear. When it come to me, I just keep it on my mind. Then I'd go home and try to play it.
I think all fiddle players ought to learn how to play a banjo because... My daddy made his boy into a banjo-playing boy, that was a tough boy, that brother of mine was something else with that banjo. He sang any type of song, and if he heard it, he could play it… We had a whole lot of favorite songs: Corn Liquor, Georgia Buck, Mama Put the Kettle on, Porcupine—whole lot of tunes we could play.
But you got to want to do it before you can do it. There's a whole lot in learning how to play music, especially a banjo and fiddle… There's a whole lot to playing music. It'll come to you, but you got to be able to handle it after it come to you.
Odell [Thompson] was first a guitar player. He quit playing the blues, and went to the banjo. Then he came up behind my brother Nate... He said, "I'm going to quit playing blues, to start the banjo." He give up the blues.
MARC FIELDS: What did you think of the young fiddle players here last night?
JOE THOMPSON: You got to want to do this thing. You know this boy last night [at the opening night jam], I finally got him to see. He just kept [shakes his hand, makes noise] You got to shuffle the bow, not a snatch. Got to learn how to use the bow—it's a round snatch [demonstrates]… But you got to get it together. He didn't know what he was playing, you can't do that. You got to find out what you're trying to play. The tune has got to come out of your head.
And if you can dream how the tune is, it's going to help you learn how to play it. But that tune has to get in there some way or another. You can't just go rushin' on it and learn how to play it. You got to figure out what you're trying to do…Maybe it's that I came up around musicians. You can't just go buy you a banjo and say, "I'm going to play this music." You got to have something to go on. You know, I seen my brother and cousins go rabbit hunting. He got a dog that can track this rabbit—it's got to be led off to something. And its the same thing, you got to... you have to dream about it. Sometime you can get the dream to come true…