There’s so much to say about jug bands (believe it or not), it’s hard to know where to begin. Why not start with my own first impression — the thing that first made me realize there’s much more to the story than I thought.
Before my interest in old music, I’d thought string bands with jug accompaniment were a white thing — a really white thing. Well, don’t believe everything you see on the Andy Griffith Show, I guess. I purchased a two-volume compilation of early jug bands and was surprised to find that virtually all the performers were black … really black.
And although it’s turned out that the African American experience in the South in, say, the 1920’s was much more rural than I’d imagined (being a northerner), jug band music is an exception — the jug bands recorded in the 1920’s were usually urban, black, and southern. A few of these records do "sound rural" to me, but to that extent, these urban bands seem to be either making fun of country life, or tapping into a nostalgia for it.
I should also mention that the level of artistry was often extremely fine.
The whole thing is … well, not what I had expected.