So I’m sitting here, a bit intoxicated, listening to my mp3 of Dueling Banjos. Wow, how gloriously complex that song becomes. Alas, I digress.
Was that song popular, distributed music before the movie Deliverance which made it famous at least in terms of me? Or did that freaky-ass F’ed up movie with the mongoloid inbred kid playing that song and Ned Beatty (sp?) getting anally violated by a hillbilly make it the song that everyone knows and loves?
Moderator’s Note: I’ll move this from General Questions over to Cafe Society, our forum for discussing movies and music.
It’s all explained in this previous thread.
I could be mistaken, that movie is older than I am, but I thought I remembered a show where Loreta Lynn and another musician played dueling banjoes. It had to be a popular song before the movie, otherwise no musician would have played it on television at the time.
At the time = early 70’s for me
Ficer67, just read the link I gave.
And the link given in that thread as well.
“Who’s pickin’ a baynjer here?”
>that freaky-ass F’ed up movie with the mongoloid inbred kid playing that song and Ned Beatty (sp?) getting anally violated by a hillbilly<
lukas, I think the prefered term is `banjo savant’. At least, that’s what my dad called him when he saw the film.
We’re terrible. 
And, yes, I think Deliverance did make the song popular. It was a big AM radio hit after the show came out and is still loved (by who? by me, that’s who!).
The in-bred looking young man with the banjo in Deliverance, who was cast for his looks and not his music ability, did not actually play the instrument. If you’ll watch the scene closely, you can see that someone else’s arm(s) are doing the work.
Huh?
And, of course, if you know anything about banjo playing, you’ll note that the guy in the movie, and the other arm doing the work, is playing in a claw-hammer style, and not in the three-finger banjo style that the actual song was recorded in.
Jeez, people, do I have to teach you everything about banjo playing?
Yes.
Dueling Banjos became HUGELY popular after Deliverance came out. You couldn’t get away from the damn thing; even the rock’n’roll stations played it. Never heard of it before the movie though.
He did, however, grow up to be James Carville.
And when you watch ‘Deliverance’ again,don’t forget to look for the county sheriff, near the end of the movie, played by James Dickey, author of the novel and the screenplay. Lots of good stories about him, and many of them are true. (I had an office next door to his for about 3 years.)
Shall I be the first to state that that was HI-LAIR-ee-US!!