User:Jim Joe Davis/sandbox

Janet R. Davis

Janet R. Davis has had a long career with the banjo -- she's played, formed a family band, written hundreds of books and even spent time running a shop just outside of current city limits.

This year, she was recognized and inducted into the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame for her work in musical education that spans decades and includes teaching classes, writing books and regular contributions to Banjo Newsletter.

Davis said she was shocked to learn she received the award and surprised at the amount of praise her entry in the museum gives her -- but she really appreciates the recognition.

"It starts off and says I'm an icon in the world of banjo and I would never say that about myself," she said. "It was a total shock; no one told me I had been nominated."

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She encouraged anyone heading to the Oklahoma City, Okla., area to check out the museum, which is focused entirely on banjos and their history.

"It's fun for anyone to see," she said.

Davis said she's been interested in music her whole life and grew up with a fondness for string instruments, thanks to a resurgence of folk music in the 1960s.

She got started with banjos in 1972 when her husband, Jim Davis, put one together for her and she taught herself to play it.

It's a great instrument, she said, because it's just so fun. It's hard not to smile while playing or listening, even if it's a sad song, she said.

"When I play and I look out at the audience, they're always smiling," she said.

As she learned, Davis said she became somewhat frustrated at the lack of educational material for banjo players and decided to create some herself -- though publishers weren't eager, citing a lack of a market for banjo books.

She self-published her first banjo book, "Splitting the Licks," in 1977.

"It took off and then publishers came to me," she said.

She's since written more than 100 books about the banjo, many published by Mel Bay Publications.

And beyond that, she said, it became difficult to find other banjo supplies, like picks and capos, in normal music shops.

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In 1977, Davis and her husband started the Janet Davis Music Company, which included a mail-order service for banjo supplies in the 1980s. People would write in and ask if she had something and she would go check the stockroom and find out before helping them make an order, she explained.

"Nothing was available, so that's sort of what I did; I made it available," Davis said.

In 1993, they moved to Bentonville, and in 1995, that mail-order shop evolved into a web store -- one of the very first online banjo shops, and the business grew from there.

In 2002, as the business outgrew the house, Davis moved into a shop on Frontage Road -- a former real estate building that the Weekly Vista office now occupies -- which gave her a retail space up front and space for web sale inventory as well as shipping and receiving downstairs.

In 2004, she got an exclusive contract with Gibson for online sales.

Working in a specialty field gave Davis a lot of opportunity, she said, because there wasn't a great deal of established competition.

"It just grew and grew," she said. "I never wanted to compete with anybody, I just wanted to make it available."

Davis said she's also benefited from an extremely supportive family. Her husband has always helped and played music with her, she said. And her children may not have had much choice in the matter, but they helped form an excellent family bluegrass band, the Blue Ridge Connection.

While they sold the business in 2012, Davis has stayed busy writing and teaching all across the country -- she's even taught overseas in the United Kingdom -- and she doesn't plan to stop anytime soon.

"I've got other books in me," she said. "So that's what I'm doing now while Jim plays golf."

General News on 10/02/2019