Hubby Jenkins
Hubby Jenkins is a multi-instrumentalist from Brooklyn, New York, who plays old-time music and pre-war country blues on guitar, banjo, mandolin and bones. He joined the Carolina Chocolate Drops around 2010, stayed on when it became Rhiannon Giddens’s band, and has since worked as a solo performer.
Jenkins was born and raised in Brooklyn. He played alto saxophone from about the age of five, switched to cello and viola in the orchestra at Brooklyn Technical High School, and played bass and drums in high school bands. At around eighteen Bob Dylan led him to country blues, and recordings of Skip James made a deep impression. He bought his first guitar and began busking, first on the sidewalks and subway platforms of New York and then in streets, coffee shops and clubs around the country. Reading about the history of folk music brought him to the banjo and then the mandolin, and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music was his guide.
He joined the Carolina Chocolate Drops around 2010, at a time when, as he recalls, the band was playing about 250 shows a year. From his bandmates, who had spent time with the North Carolina fiddler Joe Thompson, he took up the North Carolina fiddle-and-banjo style. On the band’s Leaving Eden (Nonesuch, 2012) he played mandolin on “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?” and other tracks, along with five-string banjo, guitar and bones, sang with Dom Flemons on “Read ’Em John” and took the vocal on “I Truly Understand That You Love Another Man.” The album was nominated for the Grammy for Best Folk Album.
When the Chocolate Drops turned into Rhiannon Giddens’s band, Jenkins stayed for a couple of years and played on her albums Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017). He was nominated for Instrumentalist of the Year at the 2015 Americana Music Honors & Awards. He also appears on Leyla McCalla’s Vari-Colored Songs (2013) and The American Epic Sessions (2017), and recorded with Peter Stampfel, who encouraged him to play old songs in his own way.
His first solo album, Hubby Jenkins, came out in 2016, and a second, The Fourth Day, followed in 2020. As of early 2020 he was performing on his own, presenting the African American roots of American music through old-time songs and country blues, and he also teaches workshops.
