Jim Riley - page 1


Page 1

Jim Riley JBM: Jim you seem to be a man of many talents. You play with several "Traditional" Jazz bands, You're a banjo teacher to several students and you have been playing the banjo for a long time. JR: That's about it. One of the great things is that I live in Baltimore. The city has a rich musical history with great musicians of jazz like Cab Galloway and Billie Holiday. The city is also close to Washington DC where there are a lot of military bands and we also have in town the Potomac Jazz Club that promotes and perpetuates "Dixieland" jazz. This creates a lot of opportunities for musicians and particularly banjo players. When I took up the banjo there were a lot of outlets for opportunities for me as a musician. I could play solo, with duos, trios, quartets and all the way up to full "Dixieland" bands. JBM: How did you get started as a musician? JR: There were several musicians in my family and one of them was actually out there working as a paid musician. He was a violin player working as a band leader. Everyone in the family loved music and I had two uncles that played instruments. One played guitar and the other played banjo. We had backyard parties where everybody loved to sing so I was exposed to a lot of music. When I was 16 years of age in the early 1950s and yes I am really that old. I found a recoding by Phil Napoleon and His Emperors of Jazz. From that recording I developed a real affection for "Dixieland" Jazz. I used to fantasize playing piano in a jazz band but at the time I didn't have access to one. During that same time		period Arthur Godfrey had a television show that I think was called Arthur Godfrey and His Friends. He would frequently feature himself playing the ukulele as well as the banjo. I was able to purchase a plastic banjo and I was able to accompany the songs that he was playing. One day I came across a recording by Nappy Lamare. He was a guitar player with "Pete Dailey and His Chicagoans." Nappy also played banjo and on this recording he played banjo on the song called The Gramophone Rag. When I heard that recording the banjo spoke to me and I knew that it was the instrument that I really wanted to play. This was also reinforced by recordings I heard from "The Firehouse Five." As you know they not only featured Harper Goff, that played guitar tuned plectrum banjo, but also the wonderful tenor banjo player Dick Roberts. The two of them were featured frequently and the more I heard that music the more I wanted to play "Dixieland." When I was 19 years old my older brother bought me a Kay banjo from a pawn shop. Since I had played the ukulele for several years I tuned the new banjo the same tuning as the ukulele. It sounded just dreadful. I had the banjo for about a month and then I gave it away. I then joined the Navy at age 19. While I was in the Navy I ran across two different banjo players. One was a Japanese player that was strolling from bar to bar for tips and the other one was in a burlesque show that brought the house down. He was so marvelous that the audience didn't want him to get off the stage. I realized then that I wanted to go back to the banjo and see if I had been doing something wrong. JBM: Did you know who that banjo player was? JR: No and I tried to find out who he was. He was a black banjo player but I was never able to find out who he was. When I was discharged from the Navy I used my "mustering-out" pay to buy a Gibson Mastertone banjo. I also found a Harry Reser book called "Let's Play the Tenor Banjo." With the knowledge I had from playing the ukulele I taught myself how to play the tenor banjo. One day I was in a bar with a friend that I had grown up with and he told me that he had just bought a saxophone. I told him that I had just bought a banjo. He said, "Let's get our instruments and bring them back to the bar" which we did. We played a couple of tunes in the bar and the owner heard us and hired us on the spot. From that time on the two of us started playing in various restaurants around town. Later on I would accompany piano players, play in a Polka Band and at a banjo emporium called "The Straw Hat" that employed about a dozen banjo players. Buddy Wachter was one of those players. The "Straw Hat" lasted about two years but the band I played with, the "Strawhatters,"