Back in 1965, my father came home from his job at the Sears headquarters in Chicago with an oddly shaped long cardboard box. In it - a Silvertone extra longnecked banjo with a calfskin head. ("Silvertone" was Sears' monniker for musical instruments that the company bought from Harmony Guitars and sold under their own name, just as "JC Higgins" was the company's label for sporting goods manufactured by Wilson, Schwinn, and others).
The extra long neck enabled a player to play in keys lower than the G that was standard for banjos.
In any event, I reaquired an extra long neck banjo when my friend and Chilly Winds bandmate John Birchler upgraded to a full-on Vega Pete Seeger model long neck banjo - he sold me his now-superfluous Vega Folklore banjo for a generously low price.
That's the banjo in this video. The intro to "Oh Sail Away" was the first number I wanted to learn, and it turned out to be much simpler than I had thought it to be. MainbelyK3 expressed interest in the song in the thread just below this one, and I took a little time this afternoon to record my attempts to play it. The video was too long for Instagram, so I had to upload it to Facebook - should be accessible even if you're not on Facebook. Hope this works!
https://www.facebook.com/moranjimk/posts/pfbid0fojZr5xtgL2Yu6kf2Vi9UPBsKQkUDYhGQaGeJAC6iQnN6NiwCUnM9CLiiSupvm2ul
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