On June 20, 1968, in an article on their annual Folk Festival and Fish Fry, the Daily News of Popcorn Patch, Kansas, reported that a downpicker named Brier P. Brown had played Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on his banjo. And there must have been a lot of news that day because they put it on page four, and it only has only had four pages since 1937.
Well, you know how the newspapers are; but for once they got it right. I was there and it actually happened. And of course since then it has become a legend and you hear snatches of it once in a while.
It was about seven o'clock at night and as usual pretty hot and humid when everybody was more or less done eating that he started on the strings part. That went over pretty good, long as it was; then about half an hour later he started on the horns part. The crowd was getting a little restless, but there was only the one stage. I thought maybe Brier was getting tired, but around ten after eight he rared back and lit into the woodwinds. Here and there you could hear the ancient murmur, "That ain't bluegrass." Well hey, it never was bluegrass, from the start. But audiences, what do they know.
Well, this particular audience knew one thing, it was getting late. People got up and pretended to go to the bathroom just as an excuse to wander away. He only played the clarinet part of the woodwinds so he thought he was giving it to them easy. So then he started on the flute & piccolo parts. It was nine o'clock now and I guess the crowd was just about ready to force-feed him his banjo; I guess they wanted to get to the fireworks that they were supposed to have at the end of the festival.
It was just about midnight when he wound her up and everybody but me had left. I don't know how the paper found out about it. But I'm here to tell you, they can't use that old saw any more because Brier P. actually did it, and once you have done something, that's the end of it, except if he hadn't somehow got run over by a tractor they say he would have done the second movement the next year. And of course there is a song about Brier P. Brown, but there are no words to it, because it just left everybody speechless.
They never did have the fireworks either.