Masters Of The 5-String Banjo, the huge compendium of banjo knowledge and information written by Tony Trischka and Pete Wernick and first published in 1988, is now available again in ebook form.
The book runs to 432 pages, with more than 200 photos, and an overview of 70 all-time great banjo players, as selected by Tony and Pete in the mid-’80s. There are 50 examples in tablature from these various banjo giants, plus information about the individual technique and set up preferences of these fine musicians, and many other interesting tidbits.
Pete and Tony structured the book with 18 in-depth interviews with the players they saw as most influential at the time, plus shorter profiles of another 51 top pros. These include Don Reno, Sonny Osborne, Ralph Stanley, J.D. Crowe, John Hartford, Allen Shelton, Ben Eldridge, Béla Fleck, Alan Munde, Pat Cloud, Bill Keith, plus Trischkaand Wernick
There is also an especially deep chapter on Earl Scruggs, running to 22 pages, with a great deal of information on him and his style.
Masters was initially published by Oak Publications, and went out of print for some time, only to be reprinted by AcuTab Publications, then to become unavailable again when their print run sold through. Pete took it over and made another run of paper copies about three years ago, which are now sold out as well.
So they began the process of getting it published as an ebook, meaning that this highly-popular volume can remain available for purchase in perpetuity.
But it wasn’t easy. The original printing plates were no longer available to them, nor the negatives used to create them. All they had were individual PDF documents of the second edition, page by page. These were huge files, state-of-the-art 30 years ago, but quite unwieldy and difficult to work with today.
Leslie Dare, Manager of Wernick Method Operations, tells us that she used specialized tools to reduce the file size of the PDFs, but had to hire someone to both further reduce them and then collate all the page images into book form. In the process, the book shrunk a bit to only 400 pages.
Pete tells us that the original book was a big project for he and Tony, working at a time before desktop publishing software was as universal as it is now.
“This large and unique book has felt like a treasure since I first conceived of it years ago. Tony and I threw ourselves into interviewing our heroes, truly a labor of love. Then — the hard parts were hand-transcribing and editing many hours of interviews, creating 50 or so tabs, tracking down old photos, arranging for photos of hand positions, contacts with almost 70 of the 1980s’ top banjo players, and proofreading an over 400-page book! After two extended periods of the book being out of print, we’re so gratified to make it always-available to today’s and tomorrow’s banjo pickers and fans!
This book originally sold for $30 in 1988 ($87 in today’s dollars), and as a reprint in the late 1990s it cost $60 ($117 in today’s dollars). Once unavailable, prices went over $200. The current $30 price is for people who asked to be notified when the book became available again, and will stay at that price for long enough for folks who act quickly. Then it will go up.”
The final price will be $45, so if you never were able to get a copy of Masters Of The 5-String Banjo when it was in print, now is the time to save on your own e-copy. Even some banjo nerds who have a print copy saved away may want to have it on an e-reader as well.
You can get a digital copy of the book now from Amazon at the $30 price, but don’t delay.
If you still aren’t sure, Pete has excerpted the East Scruggs chapter and made it available from his web site at no charge, for anyone who wants to make sure it looks as good as the original and the reprints.
This really is a piece of banjo history, and belongs in the library, or on the Kindle, of every serious banjo player or fan.
Well done, Leslie, Pete, and Tony!
