Foot Dillers and Diddley Bows
Recently I've been talking with an old pal of mine about the idea of getting together to play some of our old favorites, just for the heck of it. You know, sitting around the grease trap with our feet on the pickle bag, that sort of thing. Thinking about this led me to go back over some of the music I have found myself playing over the years when noodling (music equivalent of doodling) on my own. Many of the songs I like to sing in the privacy of my own tar pit are from recordings of jug bands, particularly the Kweskin Jug Band of the 60s and its main source of inspiration and material, the Memphis Jug Band of the 30s.
And this led me to thinking about jug bands in general, and in particular, the homemade -- or at least home-found -- instruments involved, like the jug, the washboard, and the washtub bass.
My musical partner Lou and I, as I may have mentioned, had something of a jug band for a brief while in the 60s, and I actually played the jug on a few tunes in those days, goofed with a washboard, and experimented with playing a ten foot cardboard carpet rolling core that we called the Blues Tube.
A few years later, around 1968, in London Ontario's seedy York Hotel, where our just barely electric blues band played on Wednesday nights for beer, we used to go down on -- I think -- Monday nights to hear a band called the Nihilist Spasm Band. This band, as I found out later, was formed in 1965 by a bunch of non-musician artists and pals. The instruments were all homemade or at least home-modified (except I do believe, at least in those days, there was a regular drum set involved). I remember an electric fiddle with a six foot neck, for example, that sounded like a thousand people reacting to being zapped with a taser. The Nihilist Spasm idea was that whenever they heard something begin to happen collectively or with any sort of cohesion, they were to work against it. The result was, as you might expect, pretty weird, atonal, and interesting.
Turns out, according to the web, the Nihilist Spasm Band is still going at it. The York Hotel is long gone but apparently most of these blokes -- I don't recall any females in the group -- are still unraveling weekly in London Ontario. It even seems they have taken the project on the road a bit, internationally.
About ten years down the line, after Lou and I finished a gig somewhere near Eau Claire, we were led mysteriously into a smokey Quonset hut bar full of people being serenaded by what sounded like a great blues/jug band. Turns out the whole band was one guy: a kind and deeply fascinating Iowan named Robert "One-Man" Johnson. Robert played the guitar -- I think it was a Dobro or other resonator-style instrument, as a matter of fact -- while sitting on a stool and operating, with his foot, a most peculiar contraption of piano hammers and goofy pedals. To make a long story short, we brought Robert to Madison eventually, and split the bill with him in concert. The crowd loved his style and his stuff, which was largely of his own composition and in the groove of jug bandy songs. I still have a captivating LP of his called '54 Chevy Panel Truck Blues. Of course, the funny thing about a one man band is that recordings never do them justice; no matter how faithful the recordings are, they sound like a band instead of a dude. You really need a video of some sort. The visual component of a one man band is a big part of its charm, though the LP does certainly stand on its own.
Anyway, the foot-thing Robert plays is called a foot-diller or "Fotdella", inspired by a similar contraption invented by Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller (1896-1976). Jesse Fuller, who wrote -- among other jewels -- the San Francisco Bay Blues (which was recorded by many folks including Peter, Paul, and Mary) was an inspiration to many musicians from "One Man" Johnson to the Grateful Dead. There is a wonderful article about "The Lone Cat" on the Roots of the Grateful Dead site (see URL at end).
The Fotdella, as can be seen in photos on the web, looks like a four foot high arch-shaped box, kinda like a giant flatiron. It has a wide very short neck. Its six strings are hammered by what look like piano hammers, which are operated by foot pedals.
Google "one man band" (are there any one-woman bands? There must be!) and you'll find many a similarly inventive use of levers, pluckers, bangers, and variously triggered and even wholly invented musical instruments for and by the one-member group. Google "homemade instruments" (in quotes) and you're hit with sixty six thousand choices. Even "homemade banjo" takes you to fourteen hundred sites. And the public library is full of books on making your own instruments. I have one out now called "Great Folk Instruments to Make & Play" by Dennis Waring; a great, very clear, and inspirational example of such a book. It features instruments from the Bleach Bottle Banjo to the Shoe Box Zither. It includes such simple projects as the Diddly Bow (also spelled Diddley Bow), which originated as a string stretched between two tacks on a wall, with a bottle or something wedged behind it as a bridge to hold it away from the surface. Usually it's plucked while the pitch is changed by moving a second bottle up and down the string. I used to do something like this with a yo-yo string tied to a radiator when I was a kid; little did I know I was playing the Diddley Bow. Or maybe the Diddley Bow-Yo. (Incidentally, in case you were wondering, as I was: this is indeed the origin of blues great Bo Diddley's name.)
So today's assignment, class, is to make yourself a musical instrument. The do-it-yourself component of folk music isn't necessarily limited to the songs themselves. As a matter of fact, I'm currently whittling a PA system out of Box Elder.
Urliography & Bibliography:
Nihilist Spasm Band:
www3.sympatico.ca/pratten/NSB/
Robert "One-Man" Johnson:
www.housedogmusic.com/credits.htm
Jesse "Lone Cat" Fuller:
taco.com/roots/fuller.html
Great Folk Instruments to Make &
Play by Dennis Waring, Sterling
Publishing, 1999.
Available on Amazon.com.