The Unknown Banjo Player strikes again! Check out the band... Roland White, God only knows who's behind the nose, David Grier and there's Pat Enright stirring up trouble on the mike. Photo: Charmaine Lanham
We all knew who it was.
But he was just too funny for words. When the Unknown Banjo Player hit the stage, it brought us all to tears laughing. He wore a brown paper bag on his head with little holes cut out for his eyes… and a little paper bag on the head of his banjo, lest his identity be discovered. And he tore the banjo up. He upstaged every act he broke in on.
One night, there were evil plans to un-mask the Unknown Banjo Player. It was Ed Dye’s “Nose and Glasses Night” (Lord, I hope that needs no further explanation). Ed declared early in the evening he was going to pull the paper bag off the man’s head if the comic showed up that night. And sure enough, about halfway through the second set, up jumps the Unknown Banjo Player like the devil himself.
As is the nature of the good-buddy scene at the Station Inn, the banjo man had got wind of the conniving afoot, and that night decided he would foil Ed Dye’s plan by wearing a wig and blackface (that once-popular vaudevillian costume makeup) underneath his paper bag.
Well, when the unveiling took place, you could have heard a pin drop. The entire Station Inn was struck speechless as the crazy comic made a speedy exit from the room. Once he left, the laughter did not stop for twenty minutes. But he has never been seen again.
This may be the only photograph in existence of the Unknown Banjo Player. Thus he retains his anonymity to the masses to this day.
