A couple more antique musician with mandolin photos!

[Petrus]

From Samuel Charters' A Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz.

[allenhopkins]

Now there's an instrument -- 12-string harp-guitar! (Actually, 12 fretted strings + 4 "harp" strings = 16.)

[DavidKOS]

String trio at Tom Anderson's Saloon, the guys playing at a picnic - New Orleans had a lot of these sort of folk bands. They were musically (and volume-wise) overshadowed by the brass bands, but they were a big part of early jazz too.

Thanks for posting!

Signed,

A New Orleans Yat

[Petrus]

A little background from the book ...

[Ray(T)]

Now there's an instrument -- 12-string harp-guitar! (Actually, 12 fretted strings + 4 "harp" strings = 16.)

I saw it as a 12 string guitar and 4 string bass. This one didn't sell recently - http://www.tennants.co.uk/Catalogue/Lots/283760.aspx

This harp guitar, which looked to be in museum condition, also didn't sell - http://www.tennants.co.uk/Catalogue/Lots/283707.aspx

[Petrus]

It's the first time I've seen a harp guitar or guitar/bass in that context. Apparently they didn't make the crossover into jazz at all.

If anyone can read the small text I posted (if you click on it you get a medium-sized image; click again and it gives you the full sized text) it states that many violinists in string bands of the era often doubled on the mandolin because it had the same tuning and fingering. Of course, most stringed instruments turned out to be insufficiently loud for the requirements of ragtime and jazz ("jass") bands, which needed to play in large dance halls or outdoors, which is why the banjo ended up becoming the main rhythm accompaniment. Guitars were used somewhat, but again only for a rather monotonous rhythmic timekeeping early on.

The book also clarifies a common belief that many early bands got their start playing in the saloons & brothels of Storyville (the "Restricted District") but in reality most of these places only had space or interest in just a piano or maybe a small string group on occasion. Often they had coin-fed player pianos that customers would pay if they wanted music, in the era before the invention of the jukebox.

Many early musicians at the dawn of the recording age went unrecorded not because they lacked means but because they either a) didn't like the sound quality of early cylinders and discs or b) were paranoid about other musicians copying their style. Not to mention that they generally only got paid a small flat rate per record with no expectations of royalties, so there wasn't a lot of incentive there to record.

[allenhopkins]

I saw it as a 12 string guitar and 4 string bass....

Good point. The "harp" strings on many harp-guitars (Gibson and Dyer come to mind) are not attached to a second neck, but either to an extension of the guitar body, or to a separate harp-like structure. They can't be "fretted" or stopped with the fingers to change pitch.

On this instrument, there's a separate neck for the bass strings, and they could be "fretted" (the quotes are because the neck may be fretless). So really a double-neck guitar, rather than a harp-guitar, perhaps.