The History of the Canjo

John L. VanArsdall (now known to the world as CanJoe*John) was born and raised in the mountains of east Tennessee where he was exposed to many styles and genres of music, and especially the music of the Appalachian mountain regions. His father played an old Stella guitar and sang “hillbilly” tunes to entertain his five kids when they were all small children. As John got older, his first attempt to learn music was at age six when his mother paid for his first piano lessons, but he had no interest in even attempting to learn to read music and his piano lessons ended shortly after they began. When he was eight years old, another kind of music caught his attention.
In 1963, while he was visiting his grandmother who was then the manager of the Blue Ridge Parkway Craft Center, of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, he was introduced to the mountain lap dulcimer. A Southern Highlands Arts Guild member and master craftsman, Edsel Martin, from the Black Mountain, NC area was in the shop to show and sell his hand carved wooden birds and also a beautiful hourglass shaped walnut dulcimer. John’s grandmother, Louise, acquired these items for the shop and put them on display. John had closely watched and listened as Mr. Martin demonstrated the tuning and strumming of the dulcimer and he was intrigued and curious to try it. Every opportunity John found, he would carry that dulcimer onto the mansion’s big wrap around porch and while taking in the panoramic view of the distant western NC Brown Mountains, he would strum away as he quickly learned to play by ear the old time tunes he recalled his father singing. John’s grandmother having purchased that dulcimer gave it, instead of to John, to his older sister, Kathy.
That same year, while still just eight years old, John decided he’d try learning to play a harmonica. His first Honer cost just $2.50 and he quickly learned to play any tune that he could hum or whistle on that mouth harp. Around the age of ten, John’s Dad bought for him a baritone ukulele which is essentially a small four stringed guitar, and with a Mel Bay book showing chord patterns, John learned to strum a few tunes. By the age of twelve, John felt he had outgrown that ukulele and he asked his Dad for an electric guitar as his gift for Christmas. His Dad bought himself a new banjo too, so he and his Dad both decided to take lessons, John on the guitar and Dad on his newly purchased used Gibson Master Tone banjo. They both went for their lessons together to the same instructor, but, as like the piano lessons before, John barely progressed. The instructor was trying to teach him how to read music and to follow the notes from sheet music provided. Instead, John wanted to learn to play Rock N’ Roll and he didn’t practice the sheet music, so the instructor encouraged him to give up on the lessons.
Each summer returning to visit his grandmother at the craft shop, John listened to and watched as other old time craftsmen and musicians who brought and played their hand made fiddles and open-back banjos to the shop. John’s heartfelt hankering was his true desire to learn the fiddle. Later, when John began attending the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, he met a young classmate that had an old fiddle and who allowed him to borrow it for a few months. Not knowing how to tune it or properly bow it, produced terrible sounds as he attempted to play it and he soon gave up, but John wasn’t satisfied that he could not be able to appease his yearning passion. He quietly waited until the right opportunity when he could get another attempt at a fiddle. A few years later his parents were planning to take a trip to visit him and his wife, Paula, in their coastal North Carolina home. Prior to their visit, during a phone conversation, John’s Dad asked if he could bring anything from home. John said, “yeah Dad, I want a fiddle…saw them for sale at a music store down the road from you”. Of course his Dad was surprised but he purchased a cheap fiddle and brought it to him. John discovered that the only way to learn to play it, though, was to find other fiddlers. He started attending local jam sessions hoping to pick up on any “licks” or techniques that any fiddle player was willing to show him. With obsessive drive, he practiced and practiced and found himself attending many other jam sessions and bluegrass shows in the eastern NC region. He met a group of guys that were all learning on their own instruments how to play bluegrass so they all formed a band and called themselves “New River Grass”, a name reflective of the river that was in their coastal NC county. John played the fiddle with them for nearly seven years and as they practiced together, performed and traveled together, all became very accomplished musicians and entertainers.
One evening in early 1990 while attending a local jam session, John met Herschel Brown, a local building contractor who also made mountain dulcimers as a hobby. Herschel, just a few days prior to this meeting, had created his first cool little one stringed dulcimer that he had made from a fretted pine finger board and he used a ‘Mountain Dew’ soda can as its resonator. Herschel, that evening gave one of his newly invented canjoe instruments to John (of which he had already also coined the instrument’s identity as a “canjoe”) and he told John to “take it out and have fun with it”. John fell instantly ‘in love’ with Herschel’s great little invention and after doing just as Herschel had suggested, he returned to Herschel’s shop a couple of days later expressing that “everyone loves these things!” Herschel told John that he had no time to make them on a large scale (at that time) but that he’d help John get started on making them for others, so John and Herschel became good friends and in collaboration they began producing the world’s first ‘canjoe’ instruments in Herschel’s shop. [Hershel did eventually separately mass produce his own simple kit version of the instruments supplying a wood worker’s hobby craft retail business and he also continued making and selling his own versions to the public as kits and as completed instruments]. A couple of years later, John’s employer passed away from cancer so he and Paula decided to move back to Tennessee in early 1993. Soon, after moving, John met Ralph Blizard, the world famous Appalachian long bow fiddler who lived just a few miles from him in Blountville, too, and in no time, John and Ralph became good friends. Ralph began teaching John his old time bowing techniques and a few of his old time tunes and John’s getting involved in the local old time Appalachian music jam sessions with Ralph helped solidify his interest in learning, playing, and performing old time and mountain music. Of course John was then mostly playing his fiddle at these sessions but he also quickly became well known in his new home town area of Blountville for his canjoe pickin’, too. The very same canjoe instrument that he had originally received from Herschel had now become a major part of his music life and later, in 1994, when Paula fell ill with cancer, he used it to help entertain her. It was Paula who gave John the name “CanJoe*John” after he jokingly declared himself to be “the world’s greatest canjoe picker”. John then established the licensed business, the CanJoe Company, again with Herschel’s assistance in the later part of 1994. Paula passed away in early 1995, and John then set out to do just what he had earlier quipped, to become the “world’s most unique musician” and to be the official provider to the world market of the authentic one-stringed original canjoe (aka canjo) musical instruments. Through his personal appearances at major festivals, public performances, radio, television, newspaper stories, magazine articles and now with stories about him in several published books by various authors, and with his CD music recordings and videos, he became established and world recognized as the master picker and master maker of the official, original Herschel Brown designed canjoe instrument. He has since played many major venues including being the ONLY canjoe instrument picker (so far) to have ever played the Grand Ole Opry [November 4, 2006]. He also has been awarded the adult “Bluegrass Instrumentalist of the Year 2007” by the North American Country Music Association International (NACMAI) and has received many other music industry awards, has performed with legendary artists on many stages and at venues such as MerleFest in NC, has produced and released two music CDs, continues to design and build beautiful canjoe instruments that are recognized as true works of art and he is now on regular tour of children’s specialty hospitals, called the “Tour of Smiles”, where he entertains sick kids and gives hundreds of his hand made instruments to chronically ill children to be used as “smile therapy”.

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Copyright © 2001 [The CanJoe Company]. All rights reserved. Revised: September 20, 2011