All About Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band Quiz

Answer: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Folk music always had a presence in American music but it started achieving a period of widespread popularity in the late 1950s. Boston University student Jim Kweskin met fellow aficionados of acoustic music in the coffee houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts in the late '50s and they began playing together and sharing songs.

While some of the new folksingers learned old American and English ballads, Kweskin and his friends gravitated toward songs (often full of double-entendres) originating in America's South in the early 20th century.

At the height of the folk revival it wasn't unusual to have someone like Judy Collins or Carolyn Hester playing at Symphony Hall in Boston, singing about Bar'bry Allen and Sweet William, and Kweskin's jug band playing at Club 47 in Cambridge, singing about George Washington playing his ukelele at Valley Forge and which girl was the 'friendliest' in Memphis, Tennessee.

Answer: It takes the place of a bass fiddle

Jug bands were formed mostly by very poor musicians. It was very unlikely any could afford a bass fiddle so someone found that if you pursed your lips and blew across the top of a stoneware jug it produced a low, bass tone. A jug was also easier to transport than a bass fiddle. Stoneware jugs were eventually replaced with plastic ones; a lot lighter but lacking in ambience. A variant that most jug bands used was the washtub bass. Turn a washtub over, attach a piece of rope (or a real bass violin string) to the center and to a broom handle used as a fingerboard, and there's your bass.

Answer: Geoff Muldaur

Geoff Muldaur was a fan of folk and blues music who met Jim Kweskin at Boston University. He was a founding member of the jug band and played banjo, kazoo and washboard as well as guitar. He still plays and tours; in 2006, the Martin Guitar Company started making the "Geoff Muldaur Signature" guitar (for 5,199 U.S. dollars). Siggins and Wolfe were also members of the band at one time and Eric von Schmidt was a highly influential Cambridge folk musician who mentored Joan Baez, Tom Rush, Richard Farina, and others, including a guy who used the surname Dylan.

Answer: strum it with thimbles on your fingers

The instructions for playing a washboard are given in one of the songs the Kweskin Jug Band played, "Coney Island Washboard": "Thimbles on her fingers made the noise, she played Charleston on the laundry for the boys". There is a method to it; if it is not played well, it's very annoying.

Answer: Fritz Richmond

On the blink, on the fritz: did you get it? John "Fritz" Richmond learned to play the washtub bass around 1958 and with a group of friends started playing coffee houses in the Boston area. At one time he was the house washtub bass player at Club 47 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning $5.00 per night.

He was a founding member of the Kweskin Jug Band in 1963. After the band broke up, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and worked as a recording engineer, and occasionally a producer, for Elektra Records.

He continued to play with folk musicians until 2004. He died in 2005 of cancer. One of his washtubs is in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Answer: Maria D'Amato

While playing in New York City, the Kweskin Jug Band went to a party put on by Elektra Records, featuring The Even Dozen Jug Band, which the record label had put together to try to cash in on Kweskin's success (it didn't work). They met Maria D'Amato, a singer and fiddle player for the Even Dozen and recruited her to join their band in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Actually, Kweskin's guitar player and singer, Geoff Muldaur, recruited her; she moved to Cambridge and they were married a few months later.

Answer: Mel Lyman

Mel Lyman joined the Kweskin Jug Band as a banjo and harmonica player. Lyman appeared with the jug band at the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival and played on the band's album "Jug Band Music" in 1965. By then it became obvious that changes were going on in the band.

The music became darker and introspective, modes not usually associated with jug bands, as evidenced on an album Lyman recorded with Kweskin and Fritz Richmond titled "Relax Your Mind", in 1966. Sometime in 1966, Lyman left the band to start a commune (or, "community", as he preferred it to be called) in the Fort Hill section of Roxbury, a Boston suburb.

Answer: Bill Keith

With the exit of Mel Lyman, Bill Keith arrived to take the spot of banjo player. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Keith, after playing with the Bluegrass Boys, returned home and joined Kweskin's band. After the band broke up, he worked with other folk musicians. He developed a type of tuning peg for banjos that would allow a player to quickly change tunings on-the-fly during a concert and introduced the "Keith style" of banjo playing.

Answer: 4

Kweskin's jug band released two records for the Reprise label: "Minglewood" in 1967 and "I'll be Your Baby Tonight" in 1968. Neither sold well because by that time the folk revival was over, at least as far as mass audiences were concerned. Kweskin released two solo albums featuring the blues/jazz/hillbilly music his fans loved.

A 1968 album of his, which included appearances by Maria Muldaur and Fritz Richmond was (perhaps longingly) entitled: "Whatever Happened to Those Good Old Days at Club 47 in Cambridge Massachusetts".

At the same time, he had fallen for former band mate Mel Lyman's vision of utopia, joining his commune, which many by then were calling a cult. In time, Kweskin turned away from music for several years.

Answer: Samoa Wilson

Samoa Wilson started singing with the Jim Kweskin Band (which was not a jug band) when she was twelve and officially joined it in 1997. She cited musical influences of Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Etta James, among others, fitting in well with Kweskin's stye and choices.