My grandad says he was in a band and played the washboard. In my dictionary it says a washboard is a corrugated metal board for rubbing wet clothes with soap. He also says his mate played a tea chest and someone else played a jug.
2007-02-25 11:46:17 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous in Entertainment & Music ➔ Music
He must have played in an old " Skiffle Group "
all this stuff used to be used as instruments then !
That`s how Lonnie Donnegan started off.
2007-02-25 11:56:41 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, those were actual objects, at least the washboard and the jug were The jug is played by blowing across the top (you can try it with a glass Coke bottle or the like). The washboard is strummed as a percussion instrument. I don't know about the tea chest, but I'm guessing it was a wooden box of some sort used like a drum.
2007-02-25 11:52:08 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
It's entirely possible that your Grandad actually played a washboard, it was commonly used as a percussion instrument back when he may have been in a band. They would normally use some sort of wooden or metal rod to grate down the washboard to make a percussive sound. As for the jug, one would blow across the opening, similar to how a flute is played, to create a tone. I'm not sure how one would play a tea chest but I'm sure it's possible! So I would assume that your Grandad really did mean these things literally and not as slangs! Hope that helped.
2007-02-25 11:51:17 · answer #3 · answered by Schmoo 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, at least the two I recognize aren't slang. You can really play a washboard. You take a drumstick or a bit of board or even your hand and use it as a percussion instrument, sort of a "scritch, scritch-a scritch, scritch-a scritch" rhythm normally. You hear this a lot in cajun music, some bluegrass too. Jug is literally blowing across a jug, that "hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo" tone you hear in the background on a lot of old bluegrass records.
Spoons are a great percussion instrument. You get two spoons, you hold one between your middle and index finger and the other across your index finger with your thumb, then hit them between your knee and your hand. My band director in high school had some fancy wooden things, but there are dance bands in Louisiana where somebody just grabs a couple of spoons from the kitchen and off we go. Used in Irish music and bluegrass too.
You'll also sometimes hear the term "washtub bass." Now it's a one-string bass, but it used to be you literally took a washtub, nailed a stick into it, and ran a string.
Back in the days when instruments were really expensive, people improvised a lot. Fiddles, guitars and harmonicas, sometimes mandolins were pretty accessible, (Sears & Roebuck catalog, I own a mandolin made in 1920s from them) but other things weren't necessarily available or affordable.
Hope this helps! You might want to look up the "Foxfire" books, lots of information about old-time stuff in there. Also, you might want to interview your grandad about this on tape recorder and give it to an oral history archive. So much of this knowledge is getting lost, all of us need to try and learn and preserve what we can.
2007-02-25 11:53:30 · answer #4 · answered by Fed_UP_with_work. 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nope, a washboard is in fact a corrugated metal board, but you can put thimbles on your fingers and play it as a rhythm instrument.
You play the jug by blowing over the top of it (the way you would a pop bottle).
Not sure what you would do with a tea chest, but people can be pretty inventive. ;-) You can tap the top, slap down the lid, etc.
2007-02-25 11:50:48 · answer #5 · answered by Epistomolus 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The jug IS actually a JUG. People used to blow in them and across the tops of them to get this really weird sound. And people used to place thimbles on their fingers and scratch them up and down on an actual washboard. I don't know what a "tea chest" is, but I know that people used to "play the spoons"-meaning that they hit their knees and legs with spoons.
2007-02-25 11:51:01 · answer #6 · answered by True Hija De Oshun! 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's possible they actually played those household items. They were used a lot in olden times for a beat. These days, we have instruments which imitate the washboard and jug for percussion purposes. There are bands out there today which use trashcans, washboards, soup cans etc. for their instruments.
2007-02-25 11:49:43 · answer #7 · answered by martinlh 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Nope, these were really used as instruments back in the day. You would take a stick or something and rub it down the washboard to make noise. You'd blow across the bottle's mouth to make more sound. However, I'm not sure how you play a tea chest.
2007-02-25 11:49:34 · answer #8 · answered by Son of a Mitch 6 · 4⤊ 0⤋
No, he probably really means a washboard. Sometimes they used to be used as instruments. I don't know what a tea chest is, but a jug is pretty obvious. check out source:
2007-02-25 11:50:57 · answer #9 · answered by Wishful Writer 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No, they were not slang terms. The old bands got together with a real wash board and jug, I believe the chest had something like banjo strings fastened to it and with good voices they actually formed bands. I believe the jugs were the old time gallon whiskey jugs that one blew through it and made sounds. The wash boards made some kind of sounds depending on who was playing it.
2007-02-25 11:58:23 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well grandad was right. The tea chest would have a broom handle shoved through it with a string attached,and played as an upright bass. Rock on grandad.
2007-02-25 12:15:25 · answer #11 · answered by alan r. 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋