A jug band is a band employing a jug player and a mix of conventional and homemade instruments. These homemade instruments are ordinary objects adapted to or modified for making sound, like the washtub bass, washboard, spoons, bones, stovepipe, jew's harp, and comb and tissue paper. The term jug band is loosely used in referring to ensembles that also incorporate homemade instruments but that are more accurately called skiffle bands, spasm bands, or juke bands because they do not include a jug player.
The Memphis blues is a style of blues music created from the 1910s to the 1930s by musicians in the Memphis area, such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows and was associated with Beale Street, the main entertainment area in Memphis, W. C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues", published the song "The Memphis Blues". In lyrics, the phrase has been used to describe a depressed mood.
Gustavus "Gus" Cannon was an American blues musician who helped to popularize jug bands in the 1920s and 1930s. There is uncertainty about his birth year; his tombstone gives the date as 1874.
David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street".
Noah Lewis was an American jug band and country blues musician, generally known for playing the harmonica.
The Gaslight Cafe was a coffeehouse in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Also known as The Village Gaslight, it opened in 1958 and became notable as a venue for folk music and other musical acts. It closed in 1971.
"Cocaine Blues" is a Western swing song written by T. J. "Red" Arnall, a reworking of the traditional song "Little Sadie".
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music—a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos. This trope goes back to early blues recordings and is used from time to time in modern American blues and blues rock.
"Stealin" is an American blues song from the 1920s. It originated with jug bands, but gained wider popularity after several 1960s contemporary folk musicians recorded it. Although various artists have recorded different verses, the chorus has remained consistent:
The Insect Trust was an American jazz-based rock band that formed in New York, United States, in 1967.
"I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate", often simply "Sister Kate", is an up-tempo jazz dance song, written by Armand J. Piron and published in 1922. Early recordings listed at Discogs include 1922 sides by Mary Straine And Joseph Smith's Jazz Band on Black Swan Records; The Virginians on Victor; and The Original Memphis Five, as an instrumental, on Pathé Actuelle. Vocalist Anna Jones recorded it accompanied by Fats Waller on piano in 1923. Arrangements ranged from big band jazz to the Alabama Jug Band in the 1930s, a precursor to jug band revival versions during the 1960s' by Dave Van Ronk and Jim Kweskin . The lyrics of the song are narrated first person by Kate's sister, who sings about Kate's impressive dancing skill and her wish to be able to emulate it. She laments that she's not quite "up to date", but believes that dancing the Shimmy like "Sister Kate" will rectify this, and she will be able to impress "all the boys in the neighborhood" like her sister.
Danny Kalb is an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was an original member of the 1960s group the Blues Project.
Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions is an American folk music album. It was recorded live by the band of the same name at the Top of the Tangent coffee house in Palo Alto, California in July, 1964, and released in 1999.
Dave Van Ronk and the Ragtime Jug Stompers is an album featuring Dave Van Ronk playing with a jug band.
Going Back to Brooklyn is an album by American folk and blues singer Dave Van Ronk, released in 1985.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops is an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina. Their 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, and was number 9 in fRoots magazine's top 10 albums of 2010.
The Even Dozen Jug Band is the debut and only studio album by the American jug band Even Dozen Jug Band, released in 1964.
Dave van Ronk presents Peter and the Wolf with Uncle Moose and the Kazoo-O-Phonic Jug Band is a 1990 album by Dave Van Ronk.
Steven 'Steve' Katz is a guitarist, singer, and record producer who is best known as a member of the rock-pop-jazz group Blood, Sweat & Tears. Katz was an original member of the rock bands The Blues Project and American Flyer. As a producer, his credits include the 1979 album Short Stories Tall Tales for the Irish band Horslips, and the Lou Reed albums Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Sally Can't Dance and the Elliott Murphy album Night Lights.
Dominique Flemons is an American old-time music, Piedmont blues, and neotraditional country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. He is a proficient player of the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. He is known as "The American Songster" as his repertoire of music spans nearly a century of American folklore, ballads, and tunes. He has performed with Mike Seeger, Joe Thompson, Martin Simpson, Boo Hanks, Taj Mahal, Old Crow Medicine Show, Guy Davis, and The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.
