Jo Banks – a Blues outside all patterns Back
It’s
really unusual: Two years after I published the first version of this story,
first Peter Poulsen turned up with a source
inaccessible to me before. So I wrote a first update in May 2006. Another half
a year later now Jo’s step daughter Debra surfaced, and despite of my contact
to her brother Paul I hadn’t had the slightest idea she even exited. Debra
kindly contributed more details and answers to open questions. So in the
following we now have the third and presumably final version of the Jo Banks
story:
Searching
for Jo Banks in the internet, you’ll find entries mostly about the British
painter Jo Banks of the Victorian age and about the literary figure Dr. Jo
Banks, a young female medic from
Jo Banks
was born in the year of 1917 in the area of
About his
parents, his childhood and his young years Jo never spoke. Meanwhile I know
that he never met his father, and his mother only once
when he was four years of age. He grew up with his grandparents, a black
Baptist preacher who had still been a slave in his young years and his Native
American wife. Grandpa died, when Jo was five and after that the boy was
transferred to an orphanage – in
Probably
by the end of the war he settled in
And he didn’t leave
it at photography. Jo performed as a singer and accompanied himself
on the guitar. He had learned to play some at the famed Old Town School Of Folk Music. His repertoire comprised classics of rural
and early big city Blues and songs of his own, and it must have been in the
second half of the 1950s, when he carved his highly original style of
performing on small and tiny club stages, a style that can’t be compared to
that of any other black artist of that time known to me. It
was also then when he opened his first ‚Club Purple Door’ and, a little later,
a larger venue, the ‚Club Green Door’, in the Hyde Park neighborhood
of
This
guitar is a story of its own. Rumor also has two
other guitars as Big Bill’s instruments. One of these (kept by John Pearse for a while) is out because it is too young, while
the other one was at least played by Big Bill. (This is the instrument they
keep at the Old Town School Of Folk Music in
The good
memories he kept of
And this
leads me to one of the most prominent features in Jo’s personality. Because Jo
had not remained a simple black boy from the country side who played a little
music and had become an outstanding photographer on top of it more or less
incidentally. Jo was highly educated and could easily hold his
own in any intellectual conversation. He could quote not only from
Shakespeare just like that. He knew the teachings of European philosophers from
Plato to Nietzsche and he commanded a knowledge of
history untypical for Americans in general until today. The question rises how
Jo Banks managed to achieve this level of education while all official
educational institutions were closed to black people.
At one
time he told me he was an autodidact who researched and absorbed all these things
by himself. This is well possible. In the autobiographies of many a Black
Panther or Black Muslim activist you can read that also these people had
schooled their intellects on their own in libraries before appearing in public
– mostly in the libraries of the prisons they had to serve in time and again.
But they also mention that they had had individual mentors, single persons who
had encouraged their readings and accompanied their first steps. This way for instance Malcolm X had become one of the most
brilliant analysts of American society in his time. His mentor had been
a black man, too. And finally there was this small class of the so called
„black bourgeoisie“, people who owed their education to the purposeful
promotion by liberal and wealthy whites.
Jo Banks
never mentioned any such encounters or experience, just like he never let on
from whom he had learned photography or guitar playing. This is why in my first
version of this story I had to apply some speculative thinking.
But the
solution is quite simple. The orphanage in
Be that as
it may, in 1961 Jo settled with his family in
But also in
The 6th
Folk & Blues Festival in Syke near
Jo Banks’
appearances at the ‚Danny’s Pan’ were a revelation in several respects. For us
young kids of just 17 it was our first encounter with a „real“
black American. There weren’t many Blacks to be seen anyway in German
cities way back then, only a very few students and diplomats from
When Jo
entered the stage, his aura immediately filled the entire room even before he
sang his first note. He was not the casual, sportive kind of guy who got into
swinging his entire body when playing, like the young Jazz cats did. Even
wearing a neck tie, he seemed rather stiff in an almost British manner. Nor was
he the somewhat tired looking man who sang with a heavy southern accent and
pitch black slang about whisky and women the way John Lee Hooker did. He stood
very upright (rarely used a stool) and as if nailed to the floor, he spoke and
sang a cleanly articulated, almost un-American English and was radiating not so
much in a majestic but in a nearly despotic kind of way. He didn’t thrill his
crowd with excitement but had it almost freeze with respect. He appeared like a
magician who didn’t even think of bothering with rabbits, but immediately
exercised a spell on the entire audience without tolerating any escape.
Musically
he didn’t care for the twelve bar Blues pattern either but took any liberty
that seemed suitable to him. In fact, he wasn’t a Blues singer in any regular
sense at all but an artist, to whom the Blues were just one of many sources
from which to scoop his own means of expression. A Blues singer he was more in
the sense that the white audience had a drawer into which to put a black singer
with a guitar – only that Jo Banks would jump right out of it again to teach
his listeners better.
And his
style of performing was unique. The guitar only had a secondary part in it.
What he elicited from the strings sounded rather jerky and awkward and would
have impressed nobody. Even us German young bloods
played more fluently, more swinging and richer of modulation. But his voice was
an instrument of irresistible magic, almost a weapon. It didn’t have a warm,
sonorous sound but something rather shrill to it, and he loved to romp about in
the high keys. He was a singer absolutely certain of hitting his notes, but he
steadily strayed into a kind of speech-song that opened him the chance to
accentuate each word, each syllable independently from rhythm and melody in the
same manner an actor would do on a theatre stage. Indeed his performance had a
lot of speech theatre elements in the European tradition. Even when Jo was
singing, Shakespeare was greeting from behind. He put his lyrics into the very
focus of his act and preferred clear as glass statements on his own time very
much to the traditional contents of the Blues. Whether
picturing the endless self delusions of a junkie about his alleged
non-addiction or the mendacity of the political class, which he portrayed –
using allusions both to Hitler and to Nixon – as a bunch of likewise miserable
and dangerous propaganda clowns: his messages were as straight and plain as any
protest song of these days. And when at some point he would get into
Gershwin’s „Summertime“ or the traditional „Will The Circle Be Unbroken“ all
the same, then this was more a concession to the crowd’s expectations than his
own inner desire. His showpiece was the „Toy Shop Killer“, drawing a straight
line from the joy of a kid about toy weapons for Christmas to the obscenities
of the Vietnam war and on to the final overkill. This song he directed like an
ambitious horror movie, pulled out all the stops and
came across so compelling that nobody could deny a chicken skin. The casket
number of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or the gimmicks of
any later gothic band were weak compared to this.
When Jo
left the stage, he didn’t leave a feeling of warmth or pleasure but first of
all the feeling of apprehension. But this didn’t harm him no way. The audience
at that time was quite open for critical thinking, warnings and appeals of all
kinds. Shallow easy listening music seemed to be dying both in
But it was
also interesting, what he did not sing about. Not only that
he had barely any Blues left in his repertoire – other than in his beginnings.
He didn’t deal with his blackness at all, seemed to ignore it completely. His
friend Big Bill Broonzy for instance had sung: „If
you’re white that’s alright / if you’re brown stick around / but if you’re
black, oh brother / git back, git back, git back“, and James Brown’s funky hymn
„Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud“ was still in everybody’s ears. But with
all his sharpness and criticism, there wasn’t a word from Jo about color and racism.
Even way
back then, when my contact with Jo was relatively close, it was impossible to
talk to him about it. No commentary that the Blues pattern maybe had become too
narrow for him or that living in Europe he didn’t feel the Blues authentically
anymore – anything that would have put him into a personal relationship with
the black tradition while plausibly explaining at the same time why he had
turned his back on it. His above mentioned word of the „refined Negro“ was the only thing I ever heard from him concerning this
subject. Even though he was quite aware of the fact that I didn’t ask questions
like this out of superficial curiosity or white prejudice but really wanted to
learn something from him, he always escaped. So all I can try is to approach
him from more general knowledge and experience.
Of cause,
not all Blacks in the
Jo Banks
fell in none of these bags. He came to
Yet, Jo
Banks had far too much format to really believe that he could leave such a
heritage behind that easily. Therefore I rather think that he lived this
attitude as a kind of permanent demand on his fellow folks. As irrelevant as
the subject of color should be indeed as
indifferently he wanted it to be treated – in anticipation, so to speak, of
better times when people, regardless of their different backgrounds, would
really act with each other as exemplarily as on the bridge of the spaceship ‘
But, of
course, he hurt quite a few feelings that way. This kind of outlook was too
hard to understand, because unlike many others he missed that little bit of
distance towards his own ego, necessary to offer and perform himself this
unbiased ease in getting on with each other for which he was longing so badly.
Instead he was keeping his fellow folks at distance. And this couldn’t work
out. I had my difficulties with it myself as a youngster whom Jo occasionally
addressed as “kid”. A sound helping of warm-heartedness and a good shot of humor wouldn’t have harmed him at all, not to mention a
pinch of self irony. But I can’t remember sharing a single laugh with this man.
So the way things were, his inaccessibility sometimes was just in a sad way
ridiculous – especially sad, because ridiculousness was precisely the last
thing he was striving for, I’m sure.
For a
while, like I said, I was in pretty good touch with him, maybe partly because I
was useful. After he had already driven off his friend Udo
Henrich I organized a few more gigs for him in the
River Rhine area, and just for the anecdote: At one time I traded in a little
displeasure for myself from a literary grass roots organization in Düsseldorf.
They were holding Sunday matinees combined of poetry reading and live music and
I booked Jo Banks in for one of these at the ‘Sassafras’ in Oberkassel,
which then belonged to Eddie Christians, meanwhile an almost legendary
character in his own right. Anyway, Jo stole the show from the poets so
efficiently that day, that afterwards these indignant gentlemen craned my neck
backwards – instead of Jo’s because as politically correct “progressives” they
didn’t dare to scold the black man. One more example of
ridiculousness.
Another
grudge – similarly undeserved – hit me from Jo personally during my visit in
Some seven years
later, in 1979, I met him one more time. Meanwhile he had put a band of young
Danish musicians together, so he could sing freely and live out his style of
performing without inhibition. With the band he had recorded a self produced LP
„Jo Banks & The Soul Train, A Small Part Of The Answer“ which mirrored his
potential at its peak (brilliant takes!), and with this act he came to the
Düsseldorf area once more, where he gave an open air show for a small circle of
old ‘Danny’s Pan’ fans. The concert was fantastic. Relieved of the rather
irksome guitar and supported by neat arrangements he performed his theatrically
directed songs more impressing than ever. From his hip down still stiff like a
broomstick and only moving his upper body, head and arms quite freely he seemed
to literally dance his lyrics all the same. With this gig, played without any
lightshow or other devices added, he could have taken any Off-Broadway joint,
and I could even imagine he could have made it with a video on MTV.
Unfortunately he wasn’t even able to keep the band intact. He probably was too
disagreeable with the youngsters. One by one they left, were replaced, were
replaced again and that was soon the end of the band.
And that was also
the last I heard about Jo Banks for a very long time. His two albums, of
course, have long been out of sale, and also the ‚Club Purple Door’ does not
exist any more. Only in spring of 2004, when I had the idea of writing down the
story of this exceptional man and artist, I came across Paul Banks in the
internet (I never met him in person). Paul could assist me with some
information for this story, for which I thank him very much, even though even
he has had very little contact with his adoptive father. Anyway, from Paul I
learned that Jo Banks was still alive, dwelling with his wife Ruth quite
withdrawn in a little town near
© copyright text July 2004, May and October 2006 by Mojo
Mendiola
©
copyright small picture around 1970, photographer unmentioned
© copyright portrait around 1970, probably a self portrait by Jo Banks
© copyright live shot around 1970 by Ulrich Horn, at ‚Danny’s Pan’ Düsseldorf
all photographs from the collection Udo Henrich (digitally restored by Mojo Mendiola)
The private picture of Ruth and Jo Banks was taken in 2005 and forwarded to me
by Ruth in May 2006.
The images of the LP covers were provided by Peter Poulsen
from
Best of
thanks to Debra and Paul Banks, Bettina Henrich, Ruth
Banks and Peter Poulsen