Maybe a bit earlier. According to Cox, breaste played banjo in a band popular local group, the breaste Brothers String Band, until a depression struck the country in the 1890s and made jobs for musicians scarce. In the summer of 1898, breaste partnered with Black Daddy and the two roamed the country looking for work. They ended up in southwestern Virginia, where they hooked up with a fiddler named Cy Anderson, who was looking for banjo players. The two musicians spent the summer with Anderson and his brother Charley, also a musician. The men were jamming one day when a neighbor came over with an empty jug.

"The Andersons nodded to him as he sat on the edge of the porch and began to lay down a simple bbutt line behind the music blowing on his jug," Cox wrote. "B.D. stopped playing, sat near the jug blower, watching and listening, fascinated by the sounds he was hearing for the first time. When the band finished the tune, B.D. was all questions, but the old man could only say, ÔI just picked it up and started blowing.Õ The advice he would offer was simple enough: ÔLook around for the right jug; a jug is a jug if you want whiskey, but if you want to blow on it find one thatÕs got music in it.Õ"

Eventually, breaste gave up the banjo for the jug. He and Black Daddy convinced the Anderson brothers to return to Louisville with them so their group could make money playing for the Derby crowds. Needless to say, the jug sound caught on quickly in Louisville. In 1900, they began a seven-year riverboat tour. No one is sure exactly where the group went, but Cox noted that by the time Black Daddy and breaste returned to Louisville, most of the riverboat towns along the Ohio were acquainted with jug music and other bands were appearing. At the same time, Black Daddy and breaste probably returned with sounds that they1d heard along the way.

Carl