“Banjo Signal” is a banjo instrumental written by Don Reno and Red Smiley and first recorded by Don Reno, Red Smiley, and the Tennessee Cut-Ups in 1958. The tune is one of the foundational pieces in the Reno banjo-instrumental catalog, alongside “Reno Ride,” “Choking the Strings,” and “Little Rock Getaway” (Reno’s adaptation of the older instrumental). Reno’s three-finger banjo style, distinct from but contemporary with Earl Scruggs’s, gave Reno’s instrumental compositions a distinctive single-string-and-melodic flavor that influenced subsequent generations of bluegrass banjo players.
Don Reno (1926–1984) had been one of the early Scruggs-influenced banjo players in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys before forming his partnership with Arthur Lee “Red” Smiley in 1952. The Reno–Smiley collaboration produced a steady stream of original instrumental and vocal material across the 1950s and 1960s; “Banjo Signal” stands as one of the strongest of those compositions, with Reno’s banjo work in command of the technique he was developing at the time.
“Banjo Signal” has been carried forward by John Hickman, the Good Old Boys, and many subsequent bluegrass banjo players. It remains a workshop standard for advanced banjo students studying Reno’s particular technical vocabulary and a regular at jam sessions where pickers want a Reno-tradition banjo feature. Reno was inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame in 1992 in recognition of his foundational role in bluegrass banjo development.
