People Who Knew Edgar Stanistreet

I hope you won't mind ...

If you would prefer that I not mention your name, or anyone else's, on my web pages, please let me know.

Possibly helpful leads

I'm hoping that some of the folks named below might lead directly or indirectly to sources of more information about Ed. Do you have a story to share?

The following references (arranged more or less chronologically) include only tantalizingly brief mentions of Ed, I'm sorry to say.

• 1981-02, Dulcimer Players News Vol. 7 No. 2, which has Leo Kretzner pictured on cover:
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jQ4SkrVZ7KgJ:issuu.com/dulcimerplayersnewsinc/docs/120823173249-2b017c020bab4b8886270a0da09da171+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
  I found the following garbled text cached at Google. Ed Stanistreet's name appears in connection with either "Imre Barsy" or "Seth Austen" maybe (?):
  

  Ann CMp Irnre Barsy Please do not reprint or redistribute without permission. Contact dpn@dpnews.com KOSACHOK i) I J1 p J :/1 credi~" IaWXlK is a Russian folk dance 1 learned frm the playing of Ed Stanistreet. an inlll1$k'ian frc. Philadelphia. He tells lie this pieoe WilS originally played on the billlal4ikl\. I learned it m the lIIolndolin . then arranged it foe guitar and finally decided puy it Q1 hamnered dulcimer . !:"oil: process, eh? Each time }OU play this piece through t.he tenp:> shwld get faster and faster. The I<06achOk dancers 8CfJat, kicking their le<;ls out, and then leap high in the air . TO emJlate the 9OUI'Id o f the ! llIlaika , bomce the hatrmers. seth Austen Winchester . Va

  I wonder whether this refers to "Shana Aisenberg, formerly known as Seth Austen":
  http://www.sethausten.com/seth.html
  http://shanasongs.com/
• Francis E. Cauthorn, 78; Was Columnist For Tribune
  articles.philly.com/1986-07-11/news/26098921_1_banjo-san-francisco-examiner-feature
  Jul 11, 1986 ...
  Daughter-in-law Dorothy Cauthorn remembered best his interest in music.
  "He studied banjo under Philadelphia master musician Edgar Stanistreet, and during the Big Band era, toured with groups, performing throughout the United States and in France," she said.
• Catching up with longtime Philly sideman Jay Ansill
  by Mary Armstrong, Philadephia City Paper, October 20-26, 2005
  http://citypaper.net/articles/2005-10-20/music.shtml Even as a lad, if it had strings, Ansill wanted to learn it. He had the typical classical violin for a few years just as typically as he put it aside and wandered to guitar. Soon he started taking lessons from legendary teacher Ed Stanistreet. "Every week I'd turn up with a different instrument!" That didn't phase Stanistreet. To him, music was music and there was no need to build barriers between styles.
• Keith A. Stanistreet of Bensalem passed away Friday, Aug. 3, 2012 http://www.bensalemowls.org/class_profile.cfm?member_id=787607
  Bensalem High School Class of 1972
  "Keith was the son of Edgar Stanistreet and Helen (Smith) Stanistreet and is also survived by a sister, Carolyn Slider of Bensalem, and many nieces and nephews."
• Stephen DiBonaventura studied with Ed in the late 1970s. In this article, published in All Frets March / April 2014, pp. 25-30,
  Stephen DiBonaventura: Not Your Average Banjo Player
  https://flipflashpages.uniflip.com/2/42574/329421/pub/document.pdf, Ed is mentioned on pp. 26-27: "... in the 1920's, Mr. Stanistreet was a member of Harry Reser's Clicquot Club Eskimos ..." and later " played balalaika on the sound track -- Lara's Theme -- for the movie Dr. Zhivago." DiBonaventura continues, "During my teenage years, I became proficient enough in playing chord-melody style on the tenor banjo that I started to be hired for gigs." The method that Ed taught to me, for both guitar and mandolin, relied heavily on slow chord soloing and (faster) chord melody style.
• Jim Flagg
  https://bucksstringservice.wordpress.com/about/
  "... is the principal owner and operator of Bucks String Service and has been playing string instruments for over thirty five years. He attended Temple University and studied several years under the tutelage of Edgar Stanistreet, renowned member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.""

Folks I've contacted

Here are a few people I've managed to reach, and plan to contact again now that I've resumed writing about Ed:

• The Digital Folk Life Peter Taney Interview,
  Reprinted from The Folk Life, Vol. 2, No. 6, June, 1978
  www.thedigitalfolklife.org/peter.htm
  "Edgar Stanistreet -- a real Philadelphian. If you ever wanted to get the old stuff about Philly, just turn on a tape-recorder and let Edgar go! One of the great things about the lessons, in fact, is the stories he tells. He goes back a long way. Some of his traveling stories, of course, not everyone necessarily believes."
• The Jeep Rosenberg - Soul of a Poet/Heart of a Picker web site does not mention Ed, but once upon a time there existed a Jeep Rosenberg MySpace page that listed among his influences, "... Cale, Willis Alan Ramsey, Debbie Green, Rabbit Brown, Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys, Jimmy Wybele, Lenny Breau, Terry Allen, Odetta, Howard Morgen, Edgar Stanistreet ..." I once contacted him and asked him if he'd be willing to share some reminiscences. I think he said he might consider that at some future date when he was not preparing to hit the road, but I have been exceptionally slow in getting my own thoughts together and have not yet gotten around to bugging him about it.

Ed's Instruments

Do you remember ...

• A mandolin sold by Edgar Stanistreet's Paramount Musical Art Studios in 1933, receipt signed by Vonetta(?) Stanistreet. Was that his wife, I wonder? Not a familiar name to me, but I understand that he had a wife who had died decades before I met him.
  
  Mark Lynch wrote to me in the fall of 2017, "I recently bought an old 1916 F4 mandolin and inside was a 1933 receipt showing the sale of a used Gibson Mandolin [ to a Ralph Dunn ] for $70, presumably the same instrument.... I am a Gibson mandolin player and collector in the MD area of DC.... I started a thread on the Mandolin Cafe and includes photos of the instrument and receipts. You can see it here:
  
  www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?135625-Vintage-Gibson-Receipts&highlight=Gibson+receipts
  
  There is no evidence that the F4 was owned or played by Edgar, only that he sold it used through his Philadelphia studio...."