International Jazz Banjo Newsletter

Many thanks to Tom Poole for this very interesting item. He runs the Cambridge Pianola Company. Although Tom is not a banjo player himself, he has a nice story to tell….
The connection between myself and the banjo is that I am John Pidoux's grandson. He was one of the banjo “greats” in the early part of the last century. Although I was in my teens and he was in his seventies, we shared a very close relationship and spent many happy hours together listening to and discussing recordings in his collection, and also those that I was collecting, including the early Humphrey Lyttleton recordings as they came out in the very early Fifties. He was also a lover of classical music, corresponded with Sir Henry Wood and played the banjo part for him in “Paliarchi”.
I believe my grandfather also used to play bass banjo at his orchestral researsals where he exacted a fee from participants, and referred to the bass banjo as the "Pregnant Member of the Family", I seem to remember. As father of five it was a description that I would think came easy to him. I seem to remember that the lower strings, at least, were copper wound on steel, like the covered strings on a piano. It is over 50 years since I handled the bass banjo and so my member of the strings may not be reliable. I think there were three strings and I was told that the vellum had been taken from one side of a government surplus 1st World War military drum. The drum, with one side still missing, was in my grandparents' shed until after the second world worldar, having been used previously on stage with a light bulb inside illuminating Grandpa's illustratation of a frog playing the banjo, which he must have adopted early on. He was a keen observer of nature and a very accomplished fly fisherman. When instruments were so scarse as the 2nd World War Grandpa heard of someone who wanted to buy a bass drup and we took it to the purchaser at Dudley, in our Ford 8, ed I remember it was sold for £4 s5. It still had the military ropework around the outside and just fitted on the front passenger seat of the Ford 8. He sold his Sunbeam motorbike and sidecar at about the same time, 1945 I think, which was just after my grandmother died.
He continued living on his own for about 8 years when failing health obliged to him to move Sidmouth to live with his younger daughter Phyllis (who had the space at her home), and she is still going strong, coming up to 94. We all keep in touch and are very fond of her. She recently phoned and asked if I would like to have her Parents' clock, which was a wedding present, to them, from the music firm, Joseph Riley, in Birmingham. Grandpa had move from London to Birmingham in 1896 to work for them as a Banjo Demonstrator, and later had what I think was his first music studio over their premises (in Sussex Street, close to the Town Hall, if I remember correctly). My Grandparents were married in 1901 at Tt. Phillips, now Birmingham Cathedral. He I think was 26, and so was my grandmother. Their courtship began in London and she was a successful millinary designer. By coincidence (or is it in the jeans/genes?), my elder daughter, Joanna, is a freelance costumier and theatre wardrober supervisor. She has now launched her new website as The Dress Doctory", offering to overhaul people's wardrobes, letting out clothes that they are fond of and which will no longer fit, and having what amounts to a mobile workshop in one of our small vans, visiting the home of clients rather than they come to her.
That is rather a long amble down memory lane which I had not intended, but it's all Pidoux related archive material that will be lost if not passed on.
On our CPC Website www.cambridgepianolacompany.co.uk , there is an article I have written conveying my appreciation of jazz.
Tom Poole