 |
| Mount Carmel Item (Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania), January 4, 1943, page 1. |
In early
January 1943, headlines across the country trumpeted the existence of a new
“secret weapon.” They couldn’t publish a
photograph because journalists who had witnessed it in action were sworn to
secrecy. But its general appearance was
betrayed by its informal name – it was named for a home-made musical instrument
familiar to fans of Bing Crosby’s radio sidekick-turned headliner, Bob Burns:
There is one weapon which,
with typical Yankee impudence, already has been nicknamed the “Bazooka,” because of its resemblance to Comedian Bob
Burns’ famous musical instrument.
Detroit Free Press, January 1, 1943.
Twenty-five
years earlier, during an earlier war, the United States Marine Corps announced
a new invention during the early years of World War I – it wasn’t a weapon, but
it might hurt your ears:
“BAZOOKA”
Port Royal, S. C., Nov. – U.
S. Marines at this station have a new invention. It’s called a
“bazooka.” No, it isn’t a cannon,
nor a flying machine, nor a machine gun, but when in operation it will make you
“shake your feet”. The “bazooka” is a
simple contrivance, consisting of but two pieces of gas pipe and a funnel, but
its secret is in the playing. It is said
the marine Corps Jazz Band is the only one in the world that boasts of a
“bazooka.”
Morgan City Daily Review (Morgan City, Louisiana),
January 11, 1918, page 1.
Although it
was no big secret, an early publicity photo showed a fake bazooka that could
have been designed by Dr. Seuss:
The real
“bazooka” entertained troops in Europe before returning home to entertain
recruits at the Marine Corps’ recruiting office on Manhattan:
The United States Marine Corps
Melody Six is (or are) back from Europe, including Sergt. Robert Burn [(Bob
Burns)] and bazooka.
The bazooka is the last word
in jazz. Sergt. Burn invented it, and
plays it.
You can hear the Melody Six,
including Sergt. Burn and the bazooka, any day you want to drop around to the
Marine Corps recruiting office at No. 24 East 23d Street. Lieut Harry W. Miller says they are going to
be a great help to him in the campaign recently inaugurated to bring the
Marines up to authorized war strength.
According to tales told by the Marines, the Melody Six are the snappiest
zippiest, jazziest aggregation of tune artists in any branch of Uncle Sam’s
service.
“We play,” says Robbie Burn,
“everything from Berlin (Irving) to Mr. Beethoven and will tackle anything
except a funeral march. The outfit
consists of two violins, a banjo, piano, drum and the bazooka.”
The bazooka, it may be added,
can be made at home. Two pieces of gas
pipe, one tin funnel, a little axle grease and a lot of perseverance, Sergt.
Robert Burn says, equal one bazooka.
The Evening World (New York), September
3, 1919, page 9.
Burns made
his Broadway debut shortly after the war:
 |
| New York Tribune, June 30, 1920, page 18. |
A novelty in musical
instruments was introduced to the American public on Thursday evening in the Bal
Tabarin, 50th street and Broadway, when Sergeant Robert Burns of the
A. E. F., who organized General Pershing’s jazz band during the war, made his
debut in the United States. He had just
arrived from London where his playing on the unique instrument, which he has
named the “Bazooka”, created a semi-sensation not only because of its peculiar
construction but because of its tone qualities.
In the latter it resembles quite closely a deep-toned saxophone and at
the same time possessing a singular vigratory and melodiously sweet tone.
The bazooka consists
of two pieces of gas pipe, to which are attached funnel-like ends. The novel musical instrument aroused the
curiosity of many well known men and women in musical circles in London, and
one manufacturer there is seriously considering the making of them for
orchestral purposes.
Daily National Hotel Reporter, July 1,
1920. New York, June 26, 1920.
He performed
in vaudeville by the mid-1920s:
 |
| New York Clipper, February 8, 1924. |
He did not
last long in vaudeville. By the early
1930s, he was a “small-time clown picking up $5 or $10 here and there around
Los Angeles.” But he quickly shot to
fame after moving back to New York in about 1935. Crooner Rudee Vallee picked him to emcee his
radio show, based primarily on his aw-shucks, Andy Griffith-esque persona and
delivery.[i]
He quickly rose through the ranks, soon
landing a spot on Bing Crosby’s radio show at $1000 a week in late-1935. He appeared
in Bing Crosby’s 1936 film, Rhythm on the
Range:
 |
| Lansing State Journal, August 4, 1936, page 14. |
See, Bob Burns and Martha Raye in
Rhythm on the Range on YouTube.
You can also
see Bob “Bazooka” Burns play his “Bazooka” in this military film from 1943:
Like the
kazoo, Bob Burns’ Bazooka was easy to play, but hard to play well. And the similarities do not end there. Drop the “ba” from ba-zoo-ka, rearrange the
syllables, and you’ve got ka-zoo.
The
similarities are no accident. Both “bazooka”
and “kazoo” appear to share a common, related root word – “bazoo.” To blow or toot one’s “bazoo” was idiomatic
slang similar to the modern expression, “toot one’s own horn,” and the word
“bazoo” standing alone was slang for any type of wind instrument, especially when
played loudly or annoyingly.
“Bazoo” and “kazoo” also reflect and were
part-and-parcel of a general linguistic trend that generated a whole host of
sometimes interchangeable slang words such as razoo, gazoo, bazook, gazook,
gazooka, bazooka, gazip, gazipe, gazunk, and gazabo. See, for example, my earlier piece, Gazip,
Gazipe, Gazunk – Variants of Gazabo?
Bazoo
“Bazoo”
appeared in John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary
of Americanisms, 4th Edition, Boston, Little, Brown, and Company,
1877:
Blowin’ his Bazoo. Gasconade;
braggadocio.
The
expression did not appear in the first three editions (dated 1859-1860),
suggesting that the word originated no earlier than about the mid-1800s.
The earliest
explanation of the word I could find is from 1869, when a newspaper in Sedalia,
Missouri put the word in their title.
The name was silly enough to garner attention in the press:
What’s in a Name. –
We have received a copy of a seven weeks old paper published in Sedalia
Missouri, called “The Bazoo.” “A rose with any other name would smell as
sweet,” but though our editor blows his bazoo
well, we can not help thinking it might sound rather better under some other
appellation.
Watertown Republican (Watertown,
Wisconsin), July 28, 1869, page 3.
The Bazoo’s
publisher, J. West Goodwin explained his reasons for choosing the name in
language that might elicit uncomfortable giggles today – to “blow one’s self”
meant something else then, it meant to talk one’s self up – not that other
thing:
So we asked J. West what
Bazoo meant, and he, expectorating, spoke: “Well, I’m damned if I know. I’ve heard, times enough, fellers talk about ‘blowing your bazoo,’ ‘tooting your bazoo,’ ‘getting
off your bazoo,’ and know it means blowing.
And that’s what I started my paper for – to blow myself, and to make
everybody else blow for me. We ain’t
like you in Kansas, down there in Missouri.
We have a lot of old fogies to deal with, while you fellers know how to
git up and git. I ‘spose bazoo is slang
for bassoon, a wind instrument. But if
it ain’t, I don’t care, and it don’t make any difference. Everybody knows that I believe in blowing,
and that that is what bazoo means, and that that is what I started the Bazoo
for. And I have made it out, for the
papers all over the country are advertising me by making fun of my ‘bazoo.”
Leavenworth Weekly Times (Leavenworth,
Kansas), July 21, 1870, page 2.
On occasion,
a “bazoo” could be a tin horn or other wind instrument:
The bully girl with a
crystal optic and tin horn was at the
jollification. She “tooted her bazoo” in concert with Hon. Nelson’s horn,
and wanted “White husbands or none.”
Fayette County Herald (Washington Court
House, Ohio), November 19, 1874, page 2.
Ottowa is to have a
brass band. Geo Kinder, of the Sentinel,
is a member, and will play a “bazoo.”
The Findlay Jeffersonian (Findlay,
Ohio), November 26, 1875, page 3.
His coat was
unbuttoned, and a bundle found which contained a music stand, nicely folded,
and intended for sheet music. He stated
that he had been engaged to play the bazoo at a
picnic, and invited the officer to accompany him. Officer Newall didn’t see it in that light,
and the dizzy minstrel was taken to the cooler.
It is thought the apparatus belongs to one of the members of Seibert’s
orchestra.
Daily Globe (St. Paul, Minnesota),
August 2, 1880, page 4.
The word
“kazoo” first appears about a decade after “bazoo.”
Kazoo
The word
“Kazoo”, as applied to a particular type of toy wind instrument, appears to
have been coined by its inventor in 1882:
This instrument or toy, to
which I propose to give the name “kazoo,” may be made in many forms and of many
different materials; but I prefer the construction and materials here described
as being attractive, durable, and cheap.
United
States Patent 270,543, Warren H. Frost, of Worcester, Massachusetts, January 9,
1883, based on application filed August 28, 1882.
The newly
invented “kazoo” hit the mass market sometime in mid-1884:
“What is the Kazoo!”
“The greatest Musical
Wonder ever invented. Plays any tune, imitates any Bird or Animal, Bagpipes and
Punch and Judy” . . . .
“Used as a mouthpiece on brass or tin horns, is the music good?”
“Yes, and the keys require no fingering.”
Harper’s Weekly (New York City), Volume
27, Number 1440, July 26, 1884, page 488 (Posted by Barry Popik on the American Dialect Society Discussion List on November 10, 2002).
Everybody is tooting
the kazoo. Haven’t you seen one
yet? Well, if you drop into Nordheimer’s
you can get one for ten cents, and you’ll find it more fun than a circus for
yourself and all your neighbors for a mile around.
Grip (Toronto), Volume 23, Number 5,
August 2, 1894.
What is a Kazoo? A
kazoo is an instrument invented to give pleasure and satisfaction to the small
boy. It is a cross between a bagpipe and
an accordion, with several new and pleasing features of its own. It can make more noise and even less music
than a brass band. It can imitate the
warbling of a cat or the screech of a mocking-bird. The inventor would be hanged, drawn,
quartered and burnt, but it is more than likely that he is kept out of the way
in some insane asylum. When you hear a noise like the combined sounds of a
fish-horn and a run-away, do not imagine it is the end of the world. It is only the small boy amusing himself
peaceably with his kazoo. – Detroit Free Press.
San Antonio Light (Texas), August 13,
1884, page 1.
 |
| New York Clipper, September 6, 1884, page 16. |
Ironically, although
one of the main selling points for the “kazoo” was that you didn’t have to read
music or play a real instrument, sheet music appeared shortly afterward:
The cover
art for one of the songs depicts “kazoos” being used as mouthpieces, plugged
into larger horns or other household items to create improvised, homemade
musical (?) instruments; much like “Bazooka” Bob Burns’ instrument a generation
or two later. Similar “kazoo bands”
became a common feature of pop-culture for several decades:
KAZOO.
The Democrats of this
city and county having abandoned their idea of a flambeau and torch clubs and
in fact their club organization a few of the more enthusiastic have resolved to
form a Kazoo band as being cheap, economical at the same time noisy and windy.
. . . The newly improved kazoo is
provided with four vent holes, so that however hot a Democrat may wax on the
march there is no danger of anything blowing up. . . . The music is delightful to the average
Democratic ear and there is nothing like it on earth or under the earth if we
except its striking resemblance to the groans and howls which comes from the
Democratic ranks immediately succeeding the November elections of every four
years.
Wichita Eagle (Kansas), October 10,
1884, page 3.
After several weeks’
work, the People’s party clubs are now in readiness for their first grand
parade . . . . [I]n addition to the twenty-two marching clubs, the City Guards,
and the five precinct drum corps, there will also be the Guitar and Mandolin
club [and] the Kazoo band. . . .
The Salt Lake Herald (Utah), January 10,
1890, page 5.
 |
| St. Paul Daily Globe (Minnesota), June 5, 1903, page 10. |
 |
| The Advertising Golfers Kazoo Band, The Sun (New York), January 17, 1915, page 4. |
In Sedalia,
Missouri, home of The Weekly Bazoo, the
owner of The Bazoo sold kazoos under a
different name, “Bazoo” – I guess he was just blowing his own bazoo:
 |
| The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo (Sedalia, Missouri), October 14, 1890, page 1. |
In 1888, a
music shop in New Zealand sold what might have been a kazoo under the name,
“Razoo”:
 |
| Timaru Herald, June 2, 1888, page 2. |
And, in
keeping with “kazoo’s” bazoo roots, bands that might otherwise be called “kazoo
bands” were frequently referred to as “Bazoo Bands”:
 |
| Chariton Courier (Keytesville, Missouri), November 10, 1905, page 5. |
In the
interests of full disclosure, I did find one, isolated instance of an
apparently unrelated use of the word “kazoo” in a book published sometime in
1882. It appeared in a book that was
full of slang, or perhaps even fictional slang, so it is not clear whether the
word had any similar meaning in the real world.
The date of publication is also unknown, so it is not clear whether it
was written before or after Warren Frost dubbed his new toy horn “kazoo” in
August 1882.
In the
context of the book, the word referred to an extended binge or protracted party
weekend:
“Kazoo’s new, isn’t
it?” says he. “What’s a kazoo?”
“Oh, a regular bump.”
Says Whopper.
“A ‘reeling ripe,’
you know,” says Mixer.
“A protracted bust,”
murmurs Little Jake, persistently ignoring the renewed emptiness of the
glasses, though it is emphatically his turn.
O. N. Looker
(pseudonym), Naughty New York, or, The
Apron Strings Relaxed: a Novel of the Period; being a truthful narrative of a
weeks jollification of three young benedicts, New York, American News Co.,
1982, page 12.
Gazooka/Bazooka
Bazoo and
kazoo were both well known words related to making a racket with an improvised
musical instrument years before Bob Burns apparently combined the two as a name
for his improvised gas-pipe and funnel trombone, the “Bazooka,” in 1918. But even then, the word “Bazooka” may have
been influenced by an earlier word, “gazooka,” and perhaps even by an earlier
sense of “bazooka “.
“Gazooka”
was frequently used as exotic gibberish that could take on any of many various
meanings.
In 1897, it
was used as the name of an African character in a cartoon:
In 1905 it
was also the name of a cocktail:
First select a crystalline cube of ice . . . . Place the cube . . . in a cut glass of the size once described by Gen. Gordon as "suitable for a gentleman only."
Upon the cube gently located the lump of sugar, upon that feather a leaf of mint and upon the mint let a cherry rest.
Over this pour to the extent of a gill that liquid supposed to come from the banks and braes of Bonnie Doon - pour slowly, that the Scotch, the cherry, the mint and the cube may delicately intermingle and send forth a perfume - a memory of things that have been.
Last, add two gills of mineral water that has been cooled, but not iced.
You have then the Gazooka. What you do with it is your own business. - Chicago Post.
Detroit Free Press (Michigan), June 12,
1905, page 10.
In the 1905
musical play, The Mayor of Tokio (book by Richard Carle, music by William Frederick Peters), one
of the plot elements revolved around a hypnotic, kiss-inducing talisman; the
“Gazooka”:
Kidder possesses a
ready tongue, unlimited nerve, and a wonderful talisman called Gazooka. This is a magnate by which a human being may
be hypnotized. Kidder meets Betsey
Lincoln, an American heiress. He demands
a kiss, which she refuses. He produces
the Gazooka and osculation ensues.
The Piqua Daily Call (Piqua, Ohio),
November 21, 1905, page 5.
In 1907, Gazooka
was the name of a baseball team and in 1909 the name of a minstrel troupe.
“Gazooka,”
and later “Bazooka,” were sometimes used to refer to something big.
In 1897 a
“Gazooka” was a large gold strike, perhaps influenced by “Bonanza”:
“It is a gazooka,” he
said, “and we are destined to rival the bonanza and railroad kings of
California.”
The San Francisco Call, November 30,
1897, Page 14.
In 1904, fishermen
of the fishing banks off Sandy Hook, New York reportedly used the word
“Bazooka” to designate particularly large fish; a usage that might also have
been influenced by “Bonanza”:
The fishermen on the
banks [(the fishing banks off Sandy Hook, New York)] nickname a cod of fifteen
pounds a “bird”; one of twenty a “beaut”; of twenty-five a “buster”; of thirty
a “darling”; of thirty-five a “bazooka.”
“Some Big Fishes,” Field and
Stream, Volume 8, Number 9, January 1904, page 744.
Perhaps Bob Burns’ “Bazooka,” a large kazoo-like bazoo, was also
influenced, consciously or subconsciously, by earlier sense of “gazooka” or
“bazooka” meaning something large.
The words
“gazook” and “bazook” were also in use during the period. “Gazook” was frequently similar to the word,
“Gazabo,” which generally mean a generic guy or wise guy. In one instance, I saw “gazook” used to refer
to an old automobile, influenced, perhaps by “gazunk” that frequently carried
the same connotation. “Bazook” was
frequently used as the mock-title of exotic Easterners, may likely have been influenced
by the name of ancient Turkish soldiers called “Bashi Bazouks.”
Evolution of the Kazoo
The “Kazoo,”
the word and the instrument, may have been new in 1882, but it was based on
noisemakers that had come before. In his
patent application, for example, Frost references the old comb and paper trick. There were also other predecessors.
Early
examples of sympathetically resonant membrane instruments include the onion
flute (also known as the eunuch flute) and the mirliton, one or both of which
were known in France as early as the 18th Century. The “onion” in onion flute is believed to
refer to an onion skin used as the membrane in early models. Why a “eunuch” is painfully unknown.
Although the
terms “onion flute” (in French, flute a
l’oignon) and “mirliton” are (and have been) frequently used
interchangeably, a catalogue of the collection of New York City’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art distinguished the two in 1902.[ii]
An onion
flute was “conical” and could be nearly 3 feet long with one membrane – looking
more like an oboe or clarinet:
 |
| “Onion” Flute. The membrane is inside the tube, just below the bulb; the hole in the shaft is where it is played. |
A mirliton
was “cylindrical” and generally less than a foot long, with membranes at both
ends – more like a piccolo or fife:
 |
| Mirliton. |
The small
fife-like “mirliton” made such a big hit at the St. Cloud fair in Paris in the
1860s that they were remembered three years later:
Three years ago there
was a song or cry Mirliton (a rude “musical” instrument chiefly sold at the St.
Cloud Fair).
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana),
September 27, 1864.
The
collection of the museum of musical instruments at the Conservatory of Music in
Paris included a large “eunuch” flute and small mirliton “so common at St. Cloud fair”:
Lower down the hall
is a valuable bass flute and an eunuch (a sort of baritone) which has
degenerated until it is only seen now in children’s mouths – the reed pipe so
common at St. Cloud fair under the name of the mirliton . . .
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana),
February 19, 1865, page 2.
An image of
the St. Cloud Fair from 1871 may even show someone playing a mirliton:
 |
| Image: MagnoliaBox.com |
Although it
was a instrument of the people, the mirliton
found its way into high society – playing for what sounds like a precursor to the
conga-line, although likely less fun:
At the last ball
given by the French Minister of War, a new cotillion was introduced. . . .
After the closing gallop the dancers assemble in a close column and promenade
the ballroom many times with military step, whilst an obligato charivari is
played on drums, tambourines and mirlitons.
Weekly Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock,
Arkansas), May 13, 1865, page 3.
In the early
1870s, the Mirliton was the name of a
swanky “artistic” club on the Place Vendome in Paris:
The “Mirliton” is an
artistic club. Politics there are lost
sight of in pleasant concerts, at which the great masters of all countries meet
with impartial approval. Its President,
of combined Legitimist and Orleanist origin, who was almost reconciled to the
Empire, is a high functionary under the Republic, and well represents the
tolerant ideas which distinguish the “Mirliton.”
The Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, New
York), March 5, 1873, page 2.
But what
“Mirliton” actually means and where the name comes from has been a matter of
debate since at least the 1860s, when a French academic surmised that it was,
at root, a form of onomatopoeia suggestive of the sound it makes, although he
also made reference to a popular hairstyle of that name and a wizard named
“Mirliton” in a play, both from the 1720s.[iii]
Although the
technology of a kazoo (or mirliton and the like) is relatively simple,
something like it, in combination with advances in electrical science, helped completely
transform communication and entertainment in the form of the telephone,
microphone and the phonograph.
In 1878, a
French text described the telephone mouthpiece as something similar to a mirliton
or an onion flute; a thin membrane that picks up vibrations from the voice.[iv]
In a “kazoo,” those vibrations are
amplified and projected by the body of the instrument; in the telephone, those
vibrations are converted into an electrical signal and recreated at the
receiver other end of the line.
Thomas
Edison invented many things – but he did not invent the kazoo. But he did invent the phonograph; and he was
inspired by something like a proto-kazoo using a comb and paper:
While experimenting
on diaphragms for the telephone, Edison had constructed a number of small
sheepskin drumheads to test their value as diaphragms, as compared with metal
and other substances.
To some of these
sheepskin diaphragms he had attached a small metal needle, which was intended
to project towards the magnet and assist in conveying the vibrations caused by
the human voice. . . .
His assistants soon
discovered that by holding the sheepskin diaphragms in front of their mouths
and emitting a guttural sound between the lips a peculiar noise approaching
music could be produced. It was something
similar to the alleged music produced by covering a
comb with thin paper and humming a tune on it.
In passing one of the
men engaged in playing on a diaphragm one day, Edison playfully attempted to
stop the noise by touching the projecting metal pin with his finger, and no
sooner had he done so than he gave one of his peculiar starts. ‘Eh! What’s
that?’ said he, which so astonished the performer that he dropped the
diaphragm. ‘Do that again,’ said the
‘Wizard,’ and it was repeated, and again his finger touched the pin to his
evident delight. . . .
‘I have it,’ said he,
finally, and he retired to his den and commenced drawing diagrams for new
machinery, which his assistants speedily made, and a few days later the first
phonograph was put together.
The Indianapolis Journal, September 15,
1889, page 9.
The “kazoo”
also led to less noble advances. Warren
Frost, who invented and named the “kazoo,” invented and named another, albeit
less successful, instrument about fifteen years later – the “Zobo”:
The “Zobo” -
US Patent 552612 to Frost, 1896.[v]
The Zobo
introduced the concept of a screw-on membrane cap, similar to those in use on
modern kazoos, although its membrane was in the mouthpiece, instead of on top
of the body.
 |
| A "Zobo" |
The first
modern kazoo, with familiar, streamlined “submarine” shape and a screw-on
membrane cap located on top was patented in 1902.[vi] It must have reached a state of near
perfection since it hasn’t changed appreciably since:
The High-Water Mark of Kazooistry
It took 75
years from the perfection of the kazoo to reach the high-water mark of artistic
kazooistry. In 1977, the Kaminsky
International Kazoo Quartetette (five members strong) made its debut at Alice
Tully Hall in New York City, supported by the equally sadistic, I mean artistic,
“Fie-On-Arts Ensemble.” The performance,
called “Kazoophony,” featured Natasha, Igor, Feodor, Boris, Stanislaud,
Pistachia, Light Fingers and Howard Kaminsky (all unrelated) performing such
crowd-pleasing favorites as John Philip Kazooka’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,”
“Yankee Kazoodle Dandy,” and Tchaikovsky’s
“1813 Overture” (the kazoo update of the familiar “1812”).[vii]
Their act
was perfect for late-night TV comedy.
For example, Natasha
Kaminsky (who’s real name was Barbara Stewart) taught Conan O’Brien to play the
kazoo in 2006.
The group,
mostly serious music students from the Eastman School of Music in in Rochester,
New York, first performed together at a picnic in Rochester in 1972, where they
provided a tongue-in-cheek, Cold War-era summary of their career so-far:
The Kaminsky Quartet, conceived by the Soviet government, has
already successfully alienated more than 1,300 audiences. They have been refused political asylum in 14
European countries, and after a seven-year tour of Siberia were deported to the
United States.
Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New
York), July 24, 1972, page 16.
Five years
later, they told an equally tongue-in-cheek story about the origins of the
kazoo:
[T]he American kazoo was invented in 1850 in Macon, Ga., by
Alabama Vest, a black man, and Thaddeus von Clegg, a German. It was called a down-south submarine because
of its shape.
The Pocono Record (Stroudsburg,
Pennsylvania), May 4, 1977, page 20.
The story has a couple problems. Although a few submersible vehicles had been built before 1850, they were not called "submarines" until about 1900. Second, 'd'ya think that a chorus of kazoo comedians in the 1970s might have borrowed the name "Clegg" from Pink Floyd's "Corporal Clegg", one of the few (if not the only) pop songs ever to prominently feature a chorus of kazoos? 'D'ya think the Clegg connection is a coincidence?
It is
possible, I suppose, that there was a tradition of making folk-instruments
similar to the mirliton or onion flute before Frost’s patent-kazoo of 1882. Like much of unrecorded folk-history, there would
be little or no documentation. The
details and names in the Von Clegg/Vest story are likely fabricated, like everything
else the Kaminsky International Kazoo Quartette fed the press. But
if anyone has any information or documentation about pre-1882 American proto-kazoos,
please let me know in the comments section.
The lack of
documentation is not a good reason to fabricate or embellish the facts, even if
the story is a good one. Despite the
story’s obviously satiric origins, it has been repeated as gospel truth for
decades (google “history of the kazoo georgia”) and even made its way into a
few serious history books. The story
survived, if for no other reason, because there was no serious history of the
kazoo available.
You’re
welcome.
You can also
thank my fellow doubters at The
Association of American Kazoologists (aka AAK), and their comprehensive collection of kazoo
patents.
 |
| Image: Library of Congress |
[i] The Amarillo Globe-Times, April 14,
1936, page 4.
[ii] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hand-Book
No. 13, Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments of
All Nations, I, Europe, Galleries 25 and 26, Cases of Galleries 27 and 28, New
York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1902, page 212 (Case 105 a).
[iii] Georges
Kastner, Parémiologie musicale de la langue française : ou Explication des
proverbes, locutions proverbiales, mots figurés, qui tirent leur origine de la
musique, accompagnée de recherches sur un grand nombre d'expressions du même
genre empruntées aux langues étrangères, Paris, G. Brandus et S. Dufour, 1866, page 286.
[vii] Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New
York), July 24, 1972, page 16.
Amazing article. Thanks a lot!
ReplyDeletei join!
Delete