Playing Close to the Alabama Vest

In 1842 clockmaker, Thaddeus von Clegg, met musician Alabama Vest in Macon, Georgia. Vest wanted an instrument made to his exact specifications. Von Clegg undertook the task producing the kazoo as we know it.

Altering the human voice by stretching a membrane across the opening of an animal horn or hollow reed dates to prehistory. These mirlitons, classified as membranophones, produce sound through the vibration of a membrane. Kazoos are singing membranophones - the only non-drum instrument in this classification.

Alabama Vest is legendary in the kazoo's who's who. Oddly except for the clockmaker's tale, there is no evidence that this mysterious musician ever existed. Von Clegg sold kazoos as a sideline until his fateful meeting with traveling salesman, Emil Zorg. He "borrowed" the design and in 1916 started the Original American Kazoo Company, which exists to this day.

The kazoo achieved its acme in the 1920s. From juvenile marching bands, to college campuses, to Paul Whiteman's Orchestra, the kazoo was as ubiquitous as the speakeasy. Over time, the instrument was banished to the toy chest. Cue the Jug Band Craze.

During the early 60s jug bands sprang up across the country. Boston had the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, New York City had the Even Dozen Jug Band, San Francisco had Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.

Being of questionable talent, I adapted well to the jug band's relaxed musicality. Enlisting a group of gadabouts, we performed at parties and coffee houses as the Pass The Jug Band. Gone are those halcyon days, but January 28 is National Kazoo Day. So, tune up the ol'6-string, dust off the tin kazoo and launch into Jesse Fuller's San Francisco Bay Blues. - as ever BB

"Willy goes into a dance and doubles on kazoo." - Down on the Corner, Creedence Clearwater Revival

TaxonoMy Rock 'N Roll Shoes

Humans attempt to categorize information. Linnaean taxonomy set the benchmark for this discipline. Order, genus, species - everything fits into well-defined compartments. Alas, as Robbie Burns opined, "The best laid plans..."

Not everything lends itself to such precise analysis. Take rock 'n roll. This expansive term includes Cold Play, Run-DMC, the Grateful Dead, Carl Perkins, Frank Zappa, The Velvet Underground, the Ramones, King Crimson and the 1910 Fruitgum Company. Styles of this music branch off like the phylum cnidarian hydra. Now aren't you sorry you didn't pick up that biological dictionary at the flea market?

From its blurry beginnings, rock has had indistinct delineations. Louis Jordan's jump blues, to Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, to Bill Haley & the Comets to Elvis and beyond. The male gamete of the blues cross-pollinated with the female gamete of gospel producing the blossom Rhythm & Blues. Further hybridism yielded rockabilly, soul music, acid rock, heavy metal, orchestral rock, punk, new wave, grunge, ad infinitum.

In early 1968, Gram Parsons joined the Byrds incubating country rock. On March 15 of that year, they played the Grand Ole Opry to a less than enthusiastic reception. Despite recent hair cuts, those long-haired hippies were told to go back to California. Years later, country audiences embraced what Parsons called "cosmic American music" as performed by the Zac Brown Band, Rascal Flatts and others.

In order to focus, our brain tries to organize the myriad of data and sensory input we encounter every day. In his book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake wrote: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." So, try to avoid a pigeonhole mentality and endeavor to embrace the infinite.

Oy gestalt! As ever - BB

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." - Henry David Thoreau