Just Kazoo Does This Guy Think He Is?

Okay, it happened again. I'm still reading "Escaping the Delta" and last night I stumbled upon another kazoo reference. Still no explanation from the author, just a casual mention:

Since [Alan] Lomax interviewed only a handful of musicians, it is also difficult to judge how closely [Muddy] Waters's repertoire matched that of his Mississippi peers. There are a few clues, though. Skip James, when he began playing on the folk circuit in the 1960s, would occasional sit down at a piano and perform Hoagy Carmichael's "Lazybones," and his biographer wrote of him playing the Tin Pan Alley torch song "Am I Blue," complete with kazoo solo.

I decided to do some kazoo research to see if maybe I'm bringing the wrong kazoo connotations to my reading. Elijah Wald (author of "Escaping the Delta") talks a lot about how the classic blues players usually only recorded blues-style music and rarely played it when performing for crowds. During concerts they would play whatever it took to please that audience. This included covers of standard pop songs of the day, bluegrass, jazz, and "hillbilly" music. Wald mentions that most blues artists were most happy and most comfortable playing the different genres of music that would please the crowds instead of the blues music that they were forced to write and record by their record companies.

I guess that maybe the kazoo playing came from playing the "hillbilly" music for predominately white crowds in the south. By the way, "hillbilly" music is the term used in the book. From the descriptions I'm assuming that it means country, novelty-type songs.

Moving on...

According to the kazoo page at wikipedia the kazoo was invented in Macon, Georgia. I live near Macon. I used to work in Macon. I regularly visit Macon and I like to think I'm an observant guy. I've also been to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame (in Macon) twice, it's lovely really. There's not one mention of the kazoo being invented in Macon in there. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard the words 'kazoo' and 'Macon' in the same sentence before. I shall start on an intense letter writing campaign very soon to get, at the very least, a plaque in the GMHF. My true wish is for some sort of big bronzed kazoo statue downtown. Hopefully in the middle of Cherry Street or somewhere else near the Douglas Theatre, which I'm sure saw its fair share of kazoo-playing blues legends back in the day. Why is this city shunning its kazoo heritage? They trip all over themselves to talk about the Cannonball House (the only Macon house hit in a Federal attack during 1864). Just imagine the tourist dollars that Macon could be raking in with a Kazoo shrine. I think Macon is seriously under estimating the disposable income of kazoo enthusiasts.

There is plenty of other fun kazoo stuff at the wikipedia page. I highly recommend the link that asks if you ever wondered what a kazoo would sound like through a wah-wah peddle.

Kazoo Info From Wikipedia