Dot Records was sortof a postwar "follow-up" label that tracked down people who had already recorded hits, and had them record something else similar. The label passed through a number of hands of larger media companies including Paramount and ABC. In my mind, Dot records is closely associated with Laurence Welk, as well as 50's whiteness and good-times cheesiness in general.
It's no surprise here that most of the arrangements of the tunes on this album have a clear bent towards safe, constrained conformity. Eddie and his backing band - uncredited, as usual for a Dot record - rip through a pile of standards like "The Bells of Saint Mary's", "Over the Rainbow" and "For You" with a clear formula. The line on the back of the cover is "The wizard of the banjo pulls another hit album out of his hat." I don't know about "hit album", but it does sound like he found it tucked in the brim of his hat, and then waywardly tossed it aside along his way. Dot records must have been on janitor duty that day, because they clearly found it and decided to release it.
What is a surprise to me is that the Peabody's "magic" seems to involve making the banjo sound exactly like a lap steel - I mean that's what he's doing on half the songs, right? Because why would you name an album "Banjo Magic" and put two pictures of the guy holding his banjo on the cover if only half the album actually had banjo on it? This guy is supposed to be synonymous with early 20th century chord-melody banjo, so why isn't his banjo playing featured here? Mysteries abound.
This is the only Eddie Peabody record I've had the pleasure of hearing, but if its any indication of his normal playing, then the key element to his style is fast picking all the strings of the banjo at once. Don't get me wrong here, he's clearly a talented player, but when the only exposure to the melody of these songs is fast picked banjo octaves highlighting the melody in a chord, for an entire album, it gets a little old. Maybe that's why he takes a lot of lap steel breaks.
The record didn't catch my interest at all really until the second side. The most recognizable songs (at least today) are all hiding there, and nothing at all featured either the drummer or bassist until the mini snare solo on "Strike Up the Band", making that by far the most interesting track on the album, and up until that point the only one involving any obvious interaction between the members of the band. I'm perfectly fine with a quiet, tasteful backing band if the bandleader has something interesting to say, but the level, no-risk-taking attitude of the banjo playing on the record doesn't carry my attention.
All the tracks are short - they felt no longer than 2min in most cases, although I wasn't watching the clock - and most of them are simple and direct. A couple times through the melody, maybe a bridge with a little improvisation. In "All the Things You Are" however, he suddenly starts warbling back and forth between a pseudo-Rumba and a heavy swing - after the initial shock wore off, I earnestly enjoyed the sudden willingness to toy with styles, a tendency he shows nowhere else on the album. Why does only this track show this kind of freedom? Who knows. No producer is credited on the album, so maybe that means Eddie himself made this awesome but lonely decision.
Fascinatingly, it is followed up by their take on Bye Bye Blackbird, a rollicking take on the standard, complete with whistled melodies and the only semi-featured bass work on the entire record. The banjo and piano work picks up here a bit too, which is an awful way to set the listener up for the snooze-fest banjo-free version of Over the Rainbow that ends the album.
But I'll take the chaff with the wheat here - Peabody is obviously a legend, and a postwar fame grab is no way to judge his artistic merit. I'll hold my judgement on his character as an entertainer until I get to see some of his early "talkie" work or hear some 78's of his early solo recordings. But as for this record, there's about three or four tunes worth hearing again, and as long as I'm carrying my baby around with one arm, the other arm just isn't into moving the needle that much. I'm afraid I'll have to get my banjo education elsewhere.
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