My blog is designed to be The History of the Washtub Bass as Experienced by LaBanana and thus to follow an internal logic, probably only I can detect, so that the reader is led on an exploration of the involved history of the Washtub as both a tuned percussion and a passionate instrument.

In our excitement about our new website, Part Two of my series was prematurely published. Please, dear reader, backtrack with me to the very beginnings of LaBanana’s long history with a tin bucket…

Blog: The History of the Washtub Bass as Experienced by LaBanana

Part One: I Was Born in a Box so I Play a Tin Tub

Part Two: Doctor Sed Give Em JugBand Music, seem to make em feel jes fine!

Part Three: Making and Playing a Washtub Bass

The History of the Washtub Bass as Experienced by LaBanana

Part 1: I Was Born in a Box so I Play a Tin Tub

My dad Anthony was a musician. When he was in high school in Chicago pre World War II, he played Trombone with Jimmy Dorsey of the Big Band Era. After the war, he formed his own Big Band (a standard with 17 pieces, a singer, a band leader) but his was an all girl orchestra with a male vocalist. His wife, my mom, was his Mistress of Ceremonies, and in the Big Band Era, the band was a show with variety acts, songs & dances.

I was, as they say, born in a trunk. It really was a cardboard box, although nicely decorated with fabric, some of which was made into a little pillow I have to this day.

After the motion pictures and television killed the Big Band circuit, my dad got a Masters in Music and became a band director in Orlando.

Surrounded with musician fellows of my dad, always at our house because we lived on a lake and had a ski boat, I yearned to be a Musician like those guys making music after an afternoon on the lake, playing gigs at country clubs, and always booked on New Year’s Eve.

When preparing to go into 7thgrade at Howard Junior High School, where my dad taught band, I took summer band camp to learn to play an instrument. I fell in love with the Eb Clarinet, a sweet soprano…mostly because I had a crush on a guy down the street who played first chair clarinet in the band and it seemed like a good fit…

But in band class the first few weeks, the band director looked around the wind sections as he said “We need an oboe player. Who would like to learn?” and no one said a word. So he looked directly at me and pointed his baton: “YOU”, he bellowed, “You can be our oboist. You can get lessons at home.”

Thus I became a classically trained oboist as I joined the local youth orchestra to be amongst other double reed players (an embouchure is a difficult thing). Iloved classical oboe parts for the melodic structure and the built in improvisation. I never got a single lesson at home.

During football season, which meant marching band in both junior and senior high school, I played the cymbals in the drum section because a double reed instrument doesn’t march. So I developed quite a sense of rhythm.

Third quarter of every game, after the half time marching shows, the bands from rival schools would gather behind the refreshment stand and clump together in groups according to instruments. Thus I got to hang with the tough boys, the drummers. My dad, the band director, always said “There’s nothin’ dumber than a drummer” as he hurled a chalk board eraser across the band room to get their attention as they drummed away whilst he had long stopped the band.

The boys at the hot dog stand always marveled and guffawed at me, a girl swingin’ those big brass cymbals, because I had a uniform chest full of medals. “How’d ya get those medals playin cymbals?” they would challenge. I would respond some variation of its because of how I swing those things…not mentioning the medals came from All City Band First Chair Oboe, Orlando Symphony Youth Orchestra First Chair Oboe, All State Band or Orchestra, etc etc…

All of this led nowhere in a musical career. I couldn’t afford, as the child of a school teacher, to buy my own oboe, and the college I attended over in St Petersburg had a lot of great programs but no orchestra…so my musical dreams lay fallow until after graduation when I returned to Orlando and got a job in the ticket division of the local Streep’s Music Store where I met Liberace, a thrill, and a guitar teacher Joe PigIron Shifalo, who was destined to become a Blues legend in his own time.

Next time: Doctor Sed Give Em JugBand Music, seem to make em feel jes fine!