They Shot, He Scored by James K. Wright

Author:James K. Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2019-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.2 • James Bohee and his brother George: the “Bohee Minstrels” advertisement, ca. 1890, International Hall, Piccadilly Circus, London.

The early American banjo – an adaptation of the African gourd “molo” or “bania”10 – came to occupy a central place in Afro-American traditional music long before it became popularized by the minstrel shows of the nineteenth century.11 In 1783, the banjo came to New Brunswick with the Black Loyalists. Its popularity grew rapidly with the touring minstrel acts of the nineteenth century, the wildly popular New Brunswick–born “Bohee Minstrels” in particular. Eldon would have been well familiar with the legend of James Douglass Bohee (1844–1897) and his brother George (1856–1930), grandsons of New Brunswick Black Loyalists and two of the most legendary banjo players of all time. The Bohees were born and raised in the north end of Saint John, “Indiantown” as it became known in the nineteenth century. In about 1860 the Bohee family moved to Boston, then the epicentre of North American banjo manufacture and pedagogy.12 There the Bohee Brothers became renowned for their banjo virtuosity and for the popular song and dance shows they performed throughout the Maritimes and along the American eastern seaboard.13 After touring North America in 1878, the Bohee Brothers sailed for England in 1881 with two other minstrel groups, the “Callender’s Georgia Minstrels” and “Haverly’s Genuine Colored Minstrels.” The Bohees would thrive in London, where they spent the remainder of their careers as concert promoters, touring performers, and theatre managers.14 It became fashionable for both commoners and aristocrats to study the banjo with the Bohee brothers in London, where they established what would become known as “the London School of banjo playing.” Their long list of banjo students included the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and other members of the royal family.15 Figure 7.3 shows a sketch from George DuMaurier’s satirical English Society (1880). It reflects the English banjo craze that was launched with the arrival of the Bohee Brothers in London, and underlines how nineteenth-century class-conscious English society, with its entrenched notions of high and low culture, was challenged (or at least bemused) by the phenomenon.16 James Bohee died of pneumonia in 1897 while on tour in Ebbw, Wales, at age fifty-three. In his obituary the Bohee Brothers were described as “the best banjoists in the world.”17

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