Feature Article - Spring 1995
EDDIE SHELTON: TEXAS BANJO LEGEND
by Eddie Collins
"There's no money to be made playing a banjo" is an old saying among the banjo playing fraternity. This remains true with few exceptions. On the bright side, if it can be viewed as such, great banjo players can be found in out of the way places throughout the land. They remain at the "old home place" instead of heeding the call of Nashville or Hollywood. One such player is Texas legend Eddie Shelton.
Eddie (he's equally comfortable being called Ed) is arguably the first 3-finger style banjo picker in all of Texas.His cousin Robert "Turkey" Shelton played a Flatt and Scruggs record for him in 1953 and that was it; 18 year old Eddie, who had been playing guitar, decided banjo was the instrument for him. Within the year, he could be heard picking on The Cowtown Hoedown, a live radio show in Fort Worth, Texas.
"I first learned by imitating the sounds I heard with a flatpick. It was nearly six months before a fiddle player who had seen another banjo player pointed out that I should be using fingerpicks. By then I already had some solos worked out the other way and it didn't make much sense trying to use the picks." "I got one of Don Reno's early records and slowed it down. That was the first time I realized that there was apattern to what the right hand was doing. Unfortunately, I chose a song that had a very unusual pattern, which I then put into a lot of other songs. It wasn't until we visited Tennessee one summer and I met another "real" banjoplayer who said that that was the strangest roll he'd ever heard. He proceeded to show me the Forward Roll; a lot of things started making sense after that."
Eddie didn't know any other 3-finger style players back home in Texas, so he mostly learned on his own, using records and "just finding the notes for things I would hear in my head." "Most of what I played could be considered Scruggs style. J. D. Crowe was playing with Jimmy Martin about that time. I liked his sound and I would try to play like that . . . Scruggs style with a lot of drive."
A turning point came when Eddie was living in Oklahoma City in the early 1960's. He had met Byron Berline who introduced him to a freshman named Alan Munde, who was studying in the music department at Oklahoma University.
"Alan would come over and want me to show him some things. It wasn't long before I had shown him everything I knew and he was showing me things. That was great because I really felt that we helped push each other to become better."
"Bill Keith and his melodic style was really catching on then, so we'd work for hours trying to figure out what Bill was doing on his records. Even after listening to him, I still developed my style around getting a chord pattern first and then finding the extra notes I needed for a melody. One thing that we figured out was that you didn't have to keep your right-hand Middle finger playing the 1st string and the Index finger playing strings 2 and sometimes 3. I started playing things where my Index would come clear down to the 4th string and sometimes the Middle finger would be hitting the 2nd or 3rd string. Scruggs style really drives, but I enjoyed developing a style that could help me carry the melody more note for note."
It was during this period (1967 - 1974) that Eddie was viewed as one of music's most innovative 5-string banjoists. So much so that Lester Flatt asked him to join his new band soon after Flatt and Scruggs disbanded. By this time, Eddie's limited experiences with "life on the road" had left him with a desire to stay closer to home and so he declined the offer.
Perhaps Eddie's crowning achievement was a solo album recorded in 1976. It was recorded in a small studio in Denison, Texas with help from Brad Davis on guitar, Dave Ferguson on fiddle, Bobby Clark on mandolin, and Vince Gil on Dobro. Although intended solely for l ocal distribution, Eddie contracted with promoter Slim Richey who managed to distribute the album worldwide.
Eddie tells of Japanese visitors at festivals who had purchased his album in Japan; from the album photo they recognized him and his custom banjo, a 1956 Gibson RB-250 with a custom 1969 neck and peghead by Randy Wood, modeled after an early Paramount design. The album is notable for its eclectic mixture of tunes, ranging from straight ahead bluegrass (“Train '45”) to contemporary pop (“I Don't Know How To Love Him”). Eddie describes how he arrives at his unique sounding compositions and breaks:
"Songs and ideas just come to me sometimes, like the song I wrote 'Blue Ridge Express.' The entire song just came to me at one time. I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound. Of course you want to vary your breaks whenthe banjo takes more than one break and that takes some extra thought. But just sitting down and working out a certain part will usually come to me all at once." (Eddie Shelton's album Expedition is available from Ridge Runner; see the Classy Classifieds on page 31 for ordering information.) Despite the success of the album, Eddie felt the need to spend more time with his family. As a result, he put away the banjo for nearly 10 years. "I hardly ever touched it."
In 1985, Eddie got a call from Alan Munde asking him to judge a banjo contest being held at a festival in Nacogdoches, Texas. He accepted, and although he didn't join the parking lot picking, it helped him realize how much he missed the music and, even more so, the camaraderie of his fellow musicians. He accepted an invitation to judge the contest the following year and joined in the jamming. By 1987, Eddie could again be found picking around Texas throughout the bluegrass festival season.
In 1989, a local bluegrass band found itself with some jobs already booked when their banjo player was placed on active military duty. Eddie agreed to help The Leon Valley Boys finish out the season. When the next year rolled around, Leon Valley again called and asked him to help with a "few" gigs they had. "Few" turned into "many" and Eddie has been with the band ever since. Raymie Moore, the former banjo player, has returned to the group, but as the fiddle player. To the delight of North and Central Texas bluegrass fans, The Leon Valley Boys can be heard at nearly every major festival in the region.
In response to the old adage, Eddie has kept his day job. He services computers for the local school district in Temple, Texas. A co-worker had a little jazz combo and invited Eddie to come and pick. "We play show tunes and pop tunes from the 30s and 40s. I found I really liked playing the different style. "The chords are more complicated and it forced me to look at them differently. For example, when they play extensions of chords, I'll play the 7th chord the way I always have. Then I'll have the piano player tell me what notes he's playing. From that I'll figure out which notes I might have to sharp or flat to get the chord to sound right. I alwayslike having others show me new things. It helps you grow as a player."
Eddie's advice to other pickers: "Jam as much as possible. That's the way to find out whether things work. When playing on stage, you should have things pretty well worked out, but when you're jamming, try to explore new ideas. Just playing with other musicians helps you figure out things you tried by yourself at home but could never get to work."
He continues with this word of caution: "On one hand, you want to try and go out on a limb. On the other, you don't want to go so far out that the musicians you're playing with can't bring you back. It's important to realize both the capabilities and limitations of the people you're jamming with."
Although he is now picking as much as he ever did, Eddie still has no intention of wandering too far from the old home place, where he enjoys life with wife Barbara and being a grandpa to his two - whoops, three - whoops, four grand kids (numbers three and four arrived within ten days of each other during the course of preparing this article).