Playing the
Comb
By Don
Forsberg
In
which our hero, a child, is made to feel that he sings
with a terrible voice and has no rhythm either,
but
by tricking himself with a comb and waxed paper,
he
winds up making music with famous folk,
and
singing too
The
storyteller swears this is an entirely true story. I believe him:
for years, I have heard him tell about his life, and in every detail his
stories are consistent. More than once, I have met characters who
played a part in the storyteller’s tales, and they have always
confirmed them to be factual.
What follows
is a transcript – I used a tape recorder to capture this
story. The storyteller has given me his permission to
do this, provided that I change not one word.
When I was a
little boy, five years old, I liked to ride my big tricycle around the
block, wave my wooden sword in the air, and sing Onward Christian
Soldiers at the top of my lungs.
Singing loud
and having fun.
That’s when the
trouble started. Little did I know…
I got
encouragement for this. I suppose it was a very cute sight.
This was shortly after…just at the end of World War Two, and it was
difficult to buy things like tricycles, because of rationing during the
war. My father had bought a used, huge, outsized tricycle – way
too big for me, but it was something he was able get hold of. He
repainted it, and put blocks on the pedals so my little legs could reach.
So here’s this
little tyke, on this huge tricycle, and not only was I waving my wooden
sword, but…
In those days,
most little children had some kind of a military uniform. It was
really fashionable for parents to buy a little soldier suit. It
was WWII – people were really into it.
I had one, so I
would also wear my little army hat. Onward Christian
Soldiers. I got encouragement for that.
Then, I started
kindergarten. I suppose I sang…continued to sing at the top of my
lungs in kindergarten. It’s in my nature to do things like
that. But it didn’t go over so well, because the kindergarten
class had a program for the parents to come and watch, as all little
children do, and I was instructed not to actually sing, but just to move
my mouth as if I was singing.
I came home and
told my mother that the teacher said I had an “ishy voice.” I’m
sure she didn’t say that – “ishy” is a childish word – I imagine though,
that I must have assumed that is what she thought – I didn’t understand
the situation. It was a little trauma for me. I decided that
I had an ishy voice and couldn’t sing.
Then, we moved
to the country, and I started first grade. My first grade teacher,
Mrs. Shaver…this was a woman who was all clouds of talcum powder and a
huge bosom. In those days, teachers could hug the students – I
remember kind of being buried in this woman’s bosom and talcum
powder…very lovable woman.
She also taught
music, and she didn’t have a clue about how to teach music. I
remember getting my music book and having it pointed out that these are
quarter notes and these are half notes and these are full notes.
We were supposed to put our hands on the desks and tap one
finger, and the number of taps was determined by the size of the
note. I thought, somehow, that it was an intellectual exercise to
follow those notes – tap…taptaptap…tap – no rhythm to this. There
was no suggestion that rhythm was something you could feel.
And I could never get that straight.
Tap………tap
tap…….taptaptaptap…tap…
It was just
impossible, so then I concluded that not only could I not sing, but I
had no sense of rhythm, either. Pretty hopeless. So from
those two experiences, I decided that I could not sing, and had
no musical ability.
Now, it’s kind
of odd that I thought that, because while I had this conception in my
mind, I was singing all the time. I mean, in my family, we
sang. My father could not drive the car without singing – I think
the car would have stopped, had he quit singing. And he encouraged
us children to sing – and we did.
But…see, that’s
within the family, and I suppose I imagined…I don’t know what I
imagined, but I can remember very well that I thought I couldn’t
sing. I suppose I imagined that within the family, they didn’t
care that I couldn’t sing – I had permission to be a bad singer and have
some fun.
Singing loud
and having fun.
That’s what I
was doing riding that tricycle, and that’s what I did with my family.
But in any other situation, I couldn’t sing – I, ah…
You know, as I
grew older, I looked at people in choirs – that looked like
fun. Church choir, school choir – gee, the choir kids seem to
have so much fun together. But I never would have gone out for
anything like that.
As I started to
get into my early teenage years, maybe it was because I thought I had no
musical talent that I was not interested in popular music at that
time. My friends would rush home and turn on American Bandstand on
the TV – I could have cared less.
Some of the
singers! You know, it was Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra would
sing mushy ballads, and for the younger people there was Pat Boone and
his white buck shoes. It was awful…
Instead, I was
interested…the only music that turned me on was jazz.
I had a little
tiny bedroom; almost no possessions. Kids didn’t have possessions
in those days. I mean, I had a pair of hockey skates, and I had a
baseball glove, and I had an old AM radio – a Halicrafter – and I
could tune to KSTP in Minneapolis and listen to Lay Kammond – he had a
jazz show.
And I listened
to that, and I started to play with the jazz musicians. My father
always gave us children, at Christmas, very often in our stockings,
there would be a new kazoo. Doot doodle oodle, de doot, toot toot
– you know. And he also showed us how to play the comb – where you
take a regular comb, you put waxed paper on it, and you hold it up to
your lips. Much better than the kazoo – it has a much better tone.
[Quiet laughter]
You think that’s
funny?
[Louder laughter]
I resent that.
[Everyone
laughs, including the storyteller]
Because later in
this story, you’ll see that I became the world’s greatest comb
player…but at any rate…
[Prolonged
laughter]
Huh!
[More laughter,
including the storyteller]
Anyway, I would
be up in my bedroom, listening to Duke Ellington, and when the saxophone
player would take a 10 bar solo, I would take a 10 bar solo with him
– on my comb, the two of us would jam together.
I got to the
point where I tried different substances – I had a metal comb, and
I put tinfoil on it, I tried cellophane instead of wax paper…I got a
cup, a drinking cup, and I could put some of my fingers through the
handle, and hold that cup – with one hand – in front of the comb and use
it like a mute. Wabba dabba dabba, you know?
[Laughter]
And…and I would
run these riffs, with Duke.
So then, I
graduated from High School, and I started to hang out in Dinkytown,
which is a district in Minneapolis near the University of
Minnesota. It was, and still is, to some degree, the place where
the Bohemian Underground, shall we say, congregated. It was the
place where the beatniks had hung out, it was later to become the place
where the hippies hung out, and I’m sure whatever group is the latest
underground group hangs out in Dinkytown to this day.
Coffee houses there…The Scholar, a very famous coffee house – the
place where Bobby Dylan got his start…learned how to perform in front of
an audience…and we hung out there. And there was always music
there.
The Scholar in Dinkytown
(click
on picture to enlarge)
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I was not one who particularly
enjoyed sitting in an audience watching the music, but I did like this
kind of music. They were starting to do…you know, there was a
philosophical and political statement that was being made by the
music. Trying to get back to the roots of American music, trying
to get away from the commercialism and the frau-frau kind of music we
were hearing, with the teenage heartbreak and all that, and get to some
music that had some grit, that had some power, that had some genuine
emotion to it. The route there maybe was through the Kingston
Trio, but you know…we got there.
And as I sat there, I thought to
myself, “The fun is on the stage.” I watched those musicians, and
I thought, “They are really having fun.”
And one of the things that struck me
the most is that when musicians are really getting into performing, and
really getting into the song, they will start to look at each
other. One will be playing and looking right into the eyes of
someone else who is playing, and there is something that is…there is a
message, a communion that is passing between those people, and I
thought, “Wow! I would like to do that too.”
But I had no musical ability, and I
couldn’t sing, so that…
Well then… jug bands started to
become popular. Now, in case you don’t know what a jug band is: it
was music…a band that uses inexpensive instruments. They use
things like a jug, where they blow into the jug. Or, a washtub
bass – an upside down wash tub with a string on it and a broom
handle, that can double as a bass. Other kinds of rhythm
instruments – music that was developed by black folk as well as poorer
white folk who couldn’t afford real instruments, but wanted to make
music.
Mama's Home Cookni' at the Extemp. Don is second from the right.
(click on picture to enlarge)
By golly, sometimes, these people, I
found out, played a kazoo or a comb.
Heh, heh, heh…
Well, Mama’s Home Cookin', one of
the local jug bands that was starting to develop in Dinkytown, was on
stage one day, and I was watching them, and I thought…they didn’t have a
comb player.
Even though I knew I knew I couldn’t
sing, I could play this instrument, called the comb. As long as I
had an instrument to play, and didn’t have to sing, I was musical.
It was difficult for me, because what I wanted to do was ask them if I
could sit in with them, and I sat there and watched them and watched
them, and finally it was down to their last set – it was the break
before the last set. As happens often, the crowd had thinned out
a bit – it was getting late.
And I went up there and said, “You
know, I can play the comb.” I had borrowed a comb and had gotten some
cellophane off a cigarette pack, so I was ready – I had an
instrument. And they said, “Well sure, you can sit in.”
And so I did. I played with
these guys. And ah…I was a little nervous, and I didn’t have those
kind of moments with the band that looked so good to me…but I was
acceptable. They’d look at me and occasionally nod a little bit –
smile…
After it was over, the leader of the
group said, “Well, not bad – but it kinda sounds like jazz, what
you’re playing.”
[Laughter]
All those riffs I’d worked out with
the Duke, I guess didn’t quite sound right.
And that was the start of my musical
career.
The band thought that it was kind of
nice…see, I played the comb mostly with a falsetto – very, very, very
high, and that was a sound that fit in with their ensemble. They
didn’t have a sound that was up there. And basically, what I would
do is just play little riffs off of whatever they were doing. I
didn’t play constantly – I would wait until I felt a riff. I had
a lot of little riffs, so it was…it was acceptable, and I joined
this band.
Wow!
And that was a lot of fun.
What I soon found out was…you know, I enjoyed…they were serious, even
though it was a jug band, they were serious, and they rehearsed, and I
found that I loved the rehearsals. To this day, I love
rehearsals, even when I’m working, as I occasionally do, in a play – I
love rehearsals because I like to be with a group of people who are
working toward a common goal, who are all depending on each other, and
who have to really meld their energies and their abilities into a
coherent whole. It’s just a great thing. I loved the
rehearsals.
And then I got a chance to join a
different jug band – the Jook Savages. Led by David Morton, a kind
of a musical genius in an odd sort of a way. This was a guy who
had a fifteen dollar guitar that he had gotten in a pawn shop, and he
never upgraded. It was part of his statement. He played very
funky music. He was very much into the satire and the statement
that the music made.
For example, at that time there was
an advertisement – a Ford advertisement: “We Ford dealers kid you
not.” We Ford dealers kid you not, we kid you not, we kid you
not. Well…
[Laughter]
We Ford dealers kid you not? I
mean, David couldn’t resist that one. So we would play that, but
we would play it for a long time, until the audience started to get how
absurd it was.
And, David had – even though it
was a jug band – a kind of jazz approach where he would start to
twist the melody, and put it through whatever permutations it could
possibly go through, and I got into…he’d do a permutation, and I’d riff
off of that, and he’d riff off of my riff, and we’d go back and forth,
and we had a lot of fun.
We went to San Francisco. This
was right in the middle of the Haight Street days in San
Francisco. It seemed that the ideas that David had – the
funky approach, trying to bring the audience into the music, the
political statements that he was making…fit right in. We had some
concerts – I remember one concert was A Tribute to J. Edgar Hoover…
[Laughter]
There was a lot of other bands that
played for this, and it raised money for some legal defense fund in
Marin County…
Gosh! We were having a
wonderful time.
Often we were on stage with other
groups – to whom I paid no attention. I thought it was all
about us…and not so much in the egotistical sense. I really
admired David Morton, and I thought what we were doing – even
though the others had more instrumental ability – I kind of liked the
approach that we had…this down-to-earth, funky sort of thing.
Big audiences – but I never was
interested in the audiences, either. What I was really getting off
on was that eye contact between the musicians. There’s something
about having an audience, I learned, that produced a kind of
electricity, but I paid little attention to them.
Interestingly enough, I googled the
Jook Savages, just in the last couple of years, and I found out who
those other bands were. I found out that the guy who drew the poster
for A Tribute to J. Edgar Hoover – it was the first poster he’d ever
done – his name was Rick Griffith, who’s quite famous now – and that
poster is for sale. It will cost you $1,076 to buy it. Some
of the other groups we played with…we played with Big Brother and the
Holding Company with Janis Joplin; we played with Quick Silver
Messenger; we played with The Grateful Dead – they were the other people
on the bill who I didn’t think were quite with it. Like we were.
[Laughter]
And then one day, David Morton said
to me, “I want you to sing too – I want you to put down the comb,
sometimes, and join in the singing.” Because one of the things
we’d do was try to make up words as well as musical riffs.
I said, “Well, you know, I can’t
sing.”
He said – he gave me this blank
look, like that didn’t register. He said, “What do you
mean?”
I said, “Well, I can play the comb,
but I can’t sing.”
He said, “What! What do you
think you’re doing when you play the comb?”
This will give you some idea how
dysfunctional I must have been, that a grownup adult, having played all
this time…I didn’t know I was singing. I thought the comb was
making the sound.
[Laughter]
In the same way that a trumpet makes
the sound.
So, I put down the comb, and I
started to sing.
Up on stage…with this electricity
passing back and forth. And you know what?
I was singing loud, and having
fun.
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