This showed up on a thread being passed around since Allen Damron died last week - its from Arthur (and for those who know, it is definitely cave related).
-----Original Message----- From: Jamie Spence [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 12:30 AM To: Undisclosed-Recipient:; Subject: AWD memories How I learnt ta play da Banjer (Or: 24 hours that changed my life forever) I think it was fall, '57. I wandered into a little coffee house about four doors north of 24th St. on Guadeloupe, the main drag there in Austin. This was when Espresso Coffee Houses were all the rage, and the Beat Generation was in fashion. This place was called The Clich�, and was the first of many such in the college town. There on the dais was this guy singing with a five-string, sitting on a high, wooden, kitchen stool, all alone, and just making more music than I could ever have imagined with so little effort. He was playing all the Weavers' stuff and the Kingston Trio's stuff and some other stuff, I didn't recognize. And it obviously took hardly any effort; his hands were barely moving, he looked quite relaxed sitting there, and yet all this complicated sound was coming out of him! I was just overcome! At his break, I climbed over everybody else to get up there and meet him; his name was Allen. I wanted to know how he did so much so easily; he tried to show me everything he knew all at once. He stuck the banjo in my hands and showed me the two most usual ways of tuning it, and the two sets of three chords that went with them. And then he tried to show me the basic Pete Seeger strum; all in his ten-minute break. I wasn't exactly getting it all. I had played a ukulele for years, and had tried a mandolin and a four-string banjo, but I had never seen a five-string until that night; and, like I say, it was just too much too fast. So he wrote down his address, and invited me to come over to his apartment the next morning for a more comprehensive lesson. I remember asking, "Where does the name, Damron come from?" He answered "From the Rio Grande Valley". I stayed and listened till they closed; I talked to him some more, and gave him every opportunity to back off from his hasty invitation that I come so early next morning, but he insisted; so I did! I showed up at his door next AM early; it was a Saturday. He was still in his shorts and just barely out of bed, but he made me welcome, and got the lesson started before he even got his pants on. "Forget the chords and the tunings; leave it in G; just first learn the basic strum." Down with all the fingers (or especially with the ring finger) across all the strings, then Down on the thumb string, then Up with the index finger on the first string: Down, Down, Up; Down, Down, Up; over and over; Down, Down, Up; with a Bum Biddy-Bum Biddy-Bum Biddy-Bum rhythm; Bum Biddy-Bum Biddy-Bum; the Bum is the up stroke; the Biddy is the two downs; over and over till it becomes as easy as walking. Yeah, right, it took me years to learn to walk. So he left me there Down, Down, Upping while he took a shower and shaved and got dressed and had breakfast (bread and Smuckers jam) and made a bunch of phone calls (He showed me how to stuff a pair of sox in the back to cut down on the volume.) He kept coming over and correcting my technique in between all these other activities. Then suddenly he just left for the day! He said for me to make myself at home, he would be back maybe around five, "Get some lunch," he said, there's bread and Smuckers, and some beer if I wanted. And suddenly I was all alone with my Down, Down, Upping! This guy had not known me twelve hours yet, but he goes off and leaves me in his home with his only banjo and an invite into his whole larder! Now admittedly, the whole larder consisted of bread and Smuckers Jam and a six-pack, and this banjo had a Bakelite rim and five frames holding the head on, and a standard (i.e., short) tulip-poplar neck; but it was the only five-string in town at the time! And he was committed to be performing with it at The Clich� again that night! (He didn't get his long-neck Vega till the next year.) Well, I sat there all day and kept at it! Down, Up, ... no, no, ... Down, Down, ... what?? ... Down, Down, Up, yeah I think that was it ... Down, Down, ... but why can't I ever do it twice in a row?? ... Up, Down ... Rats! ... At some point, I did have some Smuckers and bread, and got right back to it. By maybe 3:00, I was starting to get good enough to try putting in the hammer-ons and pull-offs that he had showed me the night before. They go in the space between the Bum and the Biddy. So now it comes out Bum-a-Biddy-Bum-a-Biddy-Bum-a-Biddy- ... (Got that?) Sho' nuff 'round 5:00 he came home; coming up the walk, he heard me Bum-a-Biddy'ing pretty good. "He's got it! He's got it!" he yelled, and grabbed up a guitar and started going at it with me on "Hard, Ain't it Hard", and "Little Maggie With a dram glass in her hand" ... and some other easy ones. And when he started singing, it was just ... well ... contagious! I hadn't sung a note in years, not in the shower nor even in my car with the radio on loud, let alone in front of anybody; but here we were just howling together like a couple o' coyotes! Suddenly it was ten minutes of six! He had ten minutes to get to "work" (at The Clich�). He grabbed some bread, smeared on some Smuckers, took the banjo right out of my hands, and raced out the door yelling "See ya tomorrow." (I don't remember that the thing even had a case.) I looked around trying to recompose myself. I put the top back on the Smuckers jar, and put it in the fridge, and closed the bread wrapper. I washed the jelly knife, we had used the same one all day. I turned the lights out, and went off to find supper. (Notice, I did not lock the door; we non-of-us ever locked our houses in those days.) But I knew right then that life would never be the same after that day! A few months later Allen even loaned me the banjo to take home to Dallas over the Christmas holidays; he was going hunting with his dad in the valley, and wouldn't be needing it! I was to learn, of course, that this isn't a unique story; the same thing happened to lots of people who asked his help in learning the instrument. I'll bet that Bakelite banjo is on loan to somebody even now. I never played professionally; just for friends and for myself; but I never pick the thing up that I don't think of the guy who got me started and those first 24 hours I knew him. And I am, of course, quick to teach anyone who shows an interest. We remained close friends until I left Austin in early '65 and then I left Texas that fall; and I guess I have not spoken with Allen since then. Funny, how you can be friends with someone and not communicate with them for 40 years! As I told someone yesterday, I simply cannot imagine this world without Allen Damron in it! "Sometimes happy, sometimes blue Glad that I ran into you After all ... " And you know the rest. Arthur Spelunk* Simpson Foster City, CA 8-18-05 *PS: Allen found out I was a spelunker at UT, and always introduced me that way because he liked the acronym. Funny, I never knew till now that he was an Eagle Scout, nor did he ever know that I was too. Scouting just never came up in all our years of conversation. A.S.S. PPS: I wouldn't sign that way for anyone but you, Allen. A.
