Comb and paper

Comb and paper is a primitive musical instrument which consists of a comb with a piece of paper pressed to it. To play it, one has to press their lips to the paper pressed to the comb and sing or vocalize into it. The voice makes the paper vibrate and changes the voice quality. [1] The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica refers to it as "the comb-music of the nursery". [2] "Comb and paper" belongs to the category of "singing membranophones", sometimes called "mirlitons" [3] after "mirliton", another name for the eunuch flute.

Playing comb and paper is sometimes called "blue-blowing", possibly in reference to Mound City Blue Blowers. [4]

Comb and paper used to be one of many improvised musical instruments to accompany country–western dances. [5]

Notable uses

The 1923-1936 jazz band Mound City Blue Blowers had Red McKenzie playing comb and tissue paper.[6][7]

The unusual noises heard in the Beatles song "Lovely Rita" after the lines "and the bag across her shoulder / made her look a little like a military man" were made with a comb and paper.[8]

Jimi Hendrix played comb and paper on his 1968 single recording of Crosstown Traffic.

In 2015, IT consultant Narinder Dhani performed "Eye of the Tiger" and "The Final Countdown" on a comb-and-paper as a contestant on Britain's Got Talent (series 9).[9]

Song titles
  • 1950: "The Comb and Paper Polka", by Doris Day
  • 1955: "Comb and Paper Blues", from a single by Ivor Kirchin
  • 1971:"My Lady (Nana)" / "Tissue Paper & Comb", a single by Clive Dunn
gollark: You can't really *parse* MediaWiki wikitext.
gollark: * MediaWiki
gollark: MediaWik is, alas, PHP too.
gollark: MediaWiki has insane unparseable wikitext but DokuWiki has similar problems (just less so because fewer plugins and templates and stuff).
gollark: Yeeeeees, but just fix the fancy URLs mode.

See also

References
  1. James Lincoln Collier, Jug Bands and Handmade Music: A Creative Approach to Music Theory and the Instruments, 1973, p.90
  2.  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Eunuch Flute". Encyclopædia Britannica. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 891.
  3. Musical instruments of the world: an illustrated encyclopedia, Paddington Press, 1976 p. 161
  4. "Blue-blowing", Oxford Music Online
  5. Betty Casey, Dance Across Texas, 1985 University of Texas Press, pp.23,24 ISBN 0-292-71551-X
  6. Scott Yanow, Mound City Blue Blowers at Allmusic
  7. Condon, Eddie (1956). We Called It Music. London: Jazz Book Club. p. 181.
  8. Lewisohn 1988, pp. 104.
  9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA4OJYH5WcM
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.