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 Manhattan in Robin Hathaway’s novel „Scarecrow“ (2003). About the person I mean you will get almost nothing. But the story of this man is absolutely worth telling.

Jo Banks was born in the year of 1917 in the area of Philadelphia, PA, in a time, that is, when bitter poverty and permanent discrimination were the regular life conditions of most black people in the USA.

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 Louisiana for some strange reason. In his youth he survived as a cotton picker indeed and later as a kitchen boy, construction laborer, cook, middleweight fighter and baseball player in the big city ghettos on the east coast. For a while he also worked as a newspaper editor in Texas (presumably Dallas) until – as a story has it – he was tarred, feathered and driven out of town by the Ku Klux Klan because of one particular article. During World War II he went to sea as a merchant marine.

Probably by the end of the war he settled in Chicago. One of the places he had seen as a merchant marine had been Copenhagen, Denmark where he had met a photographer and given him a hand with things. Now he made a fine name for himself with his own portrait studio on the south side of the “Windy City”. He showed me photos he had taken of celebrities from the film and music world. Classical black & white portraits, created in masterly compositions of light and shadow, pieces of timeless beauty. And his fame went far beyond the city. There were stories about him in various US specialist journals and I have seen some of them. Unfortunately I can’t quote them here, because I saw them in 1972, and that was before I took care to write down such details to preserve them for later.

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 Chicago. They soon became meeting places for the insiders in town. Jo and his wife Karen, a white Lady who was a musician herself and had been a fellow student of Pete Seeger’s half-brother Mike and a civil rights activist in her college days, made friends with quite a few characters who were to become world famous Blues greats. One of them was Big Bill Broonzy, whom Karen had met already before her time with Jo. And it is due to her that Jo later kept Big Bill’s last guitar in custody for many years.

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 Chicago, as Hans Theessink meanwhile confirmed to me. Thank you Hans!) But this one here is real and the last instrument Big Bill possessed. It’s a Martin 0017, made in 1940 of Cuban mahogany. This was a rather cheap kind of wood in the USA before the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959, so this guitar did cost Bill $ 42 only – not very much money even way back then. After Big Bill’s death in August 1958 Karen Banks cleared his estate and bought the guitar for $ 150 from Big Bill’s widow who needed every penny to cover depths. It remains with the Banks family until today. After Karen’s early death in 1964 it was in Jo’s custody. I remember well in what deep kind of respect and admiration I took the instrument from its case, held it in my hands and strummed a few shy chords on it, when Jo showed it to me in 1972. I was just 18 then. Today the sacred piece, which has been carefully restored meanwhile, belongs to Karen’s son, Jo’s step son Paul Banks and is played by Paul’s youngest son.

The good memories he kept of Denmark made Jo move there with his family in 1961. It had been there where he first could forget about his color, he once said to his step daughter. Remember the fact that black and white intermarriage was still meeting rough, even brutal hostility in the States at that time. Furthermore the general fight for civil rights for the black population was proceeding into its hottest phase. Many black artists were leaving the States for Europe then, and many of these went to Paris. One of the topics leading to the radicalization of the conflict was a Supreme Court verdict of May 17th 1954 in the case „Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas“, which had officially abolished racial segregation at American schools and universities. But the realization of this verdict had remained inadequate in many places.

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 Louisiana had been a Roman Catholic institution. And while the Catholic Church is well known for running excellent schools but less known for pioneering anti-racism, the Catholic orphanage gave the little boy a good education at their own school anyway not regarding the racial segregation that still was the rule at that time. They probably did so hoping Jo would later also attend the priesthood seminary, because in the USA the Catholic Church was short of priests even way back then. Jo didn’t like that part of the plan though and ran away at the age of sixteen, but he had made good use of his time up till then and never dropped studying later. Anyway, his sharp intellect made him clearly stand out among the better known Blues musicians and added to the fascination Jo was having on other people. And he was quite aware of that. Talking to me he once referred to himself as to a “refined Negro”, but without adding any further comment to this.

Be that as it may, in 1961 Jo settled with his family in Denmark and moved into an apartment near the harbor of Copenhagen. The large living room also served as a photo studio and beyond that became a joint, where young musicians met for Sunday sessions. Consequently a new ‚Club Purple Door’ was opened at Højbro Plads and later found rooms in Fiolstræde from where it gained “world fame”. Proudly Jo told me that young music enthusiasts came to him on their knapsack travels from really far away places and passed on the address to others. Jo could even show me postcards from Australia.

But also in Copenhagen itself the ‚Club Purple Door’ was a sensation. There never had been a café for young people with Folk and Blues music live, even though small and without any stage, in Denmark before. And Jo’s personal aura also gained him a lot of public attention. The newspapers wrote about him, he appeared in several Danish TV shows, and in 1965 the Danish Columbia released an LP by Jo Banks entitled „Jo Banks Of The Purple Door“, a low budget production in the style of the time with Jo performing some traditional Folk and Blues songs and some original material.

The 6th Folk & Blues Festival in Syke near Bremen hosted Jo Banks’ presumably first stage appearance in Germany (together with his stepson Paul). Not even folks in Syke can tell me today what year exactly that was, but I think it must have been in 1969. There Jo Banks met Folk-Blues guitarist and singer Udo Henrich from Düsseldorf, and the new friend decided to help Jo become more popular in Germany. Udo wrote the only useful info paper on Jo Banks so far of which I’m still keeping a yellowed copy in my archive. And his daughter Bettina – Udo himself, I’m sad to say, died early – could also provide the photographs shown here from her Daddy’s estate. Thanks a lot for this! Udo Henrich organized a string of gigs for Jo Banks and also brought him to the Düsseldorf ‘Danny’s Pan’ Folk Club where I came to know him.

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 Africa. Unless you lived in the Frankfurt area, where there were many black GIs around and where they consequently had black entertainers performing much earlier. But all we had heard of black music was from recordings or from white disciples.

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 America and in Europe. The Disco hammer as the first of a new and still uninterrupted series of industrial blows against music with some brains, against entertainment with mind (aside from the classical department, that is) had not yet come down. And the fascination of Jo’s stage shows was inevitable. It stayed quiet in the room for a while until the listeners had caught up with themselves, but then the applause was thunderous and lasting.

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 USA took an offensive part in the fight for their civil rights. Many also searched ways to minimize the racist pressure without active resistance. The custom of straightening their black crinkly hair by a painful procedure and then dye it and even take certain pills to bleach their skin was one of them, yet a very naïve one. The Afro-Wagon-Wheel-Hairstyles of the 1960s were the answer of the activists to this attempt of repression and adjustment. Yet, the Afro-Look turned out to be just a short lived fashion while the so called Conks, the straightened hairstyles, are still in usage. And the most extreme attempt to redesign his looks as “white” as possible was probably exercised by Michael Jackson – including the complete destruction of his very own face. Some very light skinned Blacks even went out of their ways to take up completely new identities. While others proudly adapted provoking, African sounding names, they left their homes and settled somewhere where nobody knew them from the past to continue their lives as Whites. No problem in a multi-ethnic country like America where a slightly brownish skin allows many conclusions. It happened that not even their spouses had any idea of the black heritage of such migrants. But I won’t talk about the damage they suffered in their all too adjusted souls, which in many cases later exploded into dramatic conflicts. And finally there were those who went to Europe. They enjoyed the fact that they had to experience considerably less racism in their everyday lives there, but they appeared in public with determination as ambassadors of the Afro-American culture, and some of them took part vehemently in the civil rights struggle in the USA from their exiles, such as writer James Baldwin.

Jo Banks fell in none of these bags. He came to Europe and seemed to pretend that the subject of his background was thereby completely disposed of and not concerning him anymore. Black or not black seemed to have no part in his thinking whatsoever while it was still one of the hottest issues in the US. He wanted to deal with the questions concerning all mankind only, not just parts of it. He had assimilated European educational contents so perfectly that he could outdo quite a few Europeans with ease. But this did not seem to be an act of adjustment to him, for this he appeared far to self confident and secure. Much rather he seemed to feel that participating in the “white culture” released him from his obligation towards the black tradition. And very understandably he would not allow any White to fix him back to the Blues.

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 ‘Enterprise’. From this perspective, I believe, one would do him the best of justice.

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 Denmark, even though the incident could have been all funny. Together with my pal Mick, a truly gifted Blues harmonica player, I spent a few days at Jo’s in Copenhagen and he accommodated us at his home. He was sharing it with a real beautiful thoroughbred tomcat – I think it was a Siamese tomcat – by the name of Spot. Spot had won plenty of prizes and really was his masters pride. And our host stressed it several times that Spot was keeping himself away from all other humans and only trusted Jo. But one morning when Jo came to wake us up, he found Spot all stretched out and comfortably purring by my side upon my sleeping bag. Jo felt terribly betrayed and punished me – instead of the animal – by never exchanging a word with me no more …

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 Copenhagen, almost 90 years old but in solid health. In was on Feb. 21st 2011 that he closed his eyes for ever.

 

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© 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 Denmark in May 2006
www.steppeulvene.com/index.jo_banks.html

Best of thanks to Debra and Paul Banks, Bettina Henrich, Ruth Banks and Peter Poulsen