[Dixielandjazz] Tony Spargo Kazoo master

[Don Ingle]

Indeed, many of us caught the late nights live broadcasts from NY with some
good jazz bands to hear.
I also note that your thinking that Napoleon was using some mute as you
heard Spargo's kazoo is not a bad take, since Humes and Berg was making (may
still make) a trumpet mute that took the sound and vibrated it so it sounded
like a kazoo. Talk about retrograde evolution!
I still have an old Philco radio, tube type, that I had in college in E.
Lansing, MI that could pull in about every major station in NY, N.O.,
Denver, Houston, and the famous Del Rio station in Mexico where they offered
for sale a "life sized, glow-in-the-dark, statue of Jesus Christ." That
boomer came in loud and clear coast to coast. A station in Toronto had a
staff orchestra and some good arrangers and did some marvelous live
broadcasts with charts much like the old Alec Wilder broadcasts. Marvelous
players.
We were fortunate enough to live in those times. But then I am not un happy
to be still kicking today, even if no longer as likely to receive anything
of much musical (jazz) merit on AM.
Don Ingle

----- Original Message -----
From: <JimDBB@aol.com>
To: <dixielandjazz@ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 4:30 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Tony Spargo Kazoo master


> there has been considerable hilarity at the expense of the kazoo and I
wold
> like to point out a true master of the kazoo, Tony Spargo.  Tony Spargo
> )Sparbaro) was the drummer with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and in
the
> late 40s and early 50s he was with Phil Napoleon's greayt band at Jimmy
> Ryan's.  Spargo had a huge kazoo which he had on a stand next to the
drums.
> On certain tunes Tony would launch into some really swinging solos on that
> kazoo.  I was in high school in Wisconsin and would pick up their
broadcasts
> in Wisconsin...in those dear departed days of AM radio when you could
jpcik
> up stations around the country.  I had no idea that he was playang a kazoo
> and I thought that Napoleon was playing with some kind of mute.  At times
> Napoleon would let Tony start off with a kazoo solo and one by one the
horns
> would come in and build some powerfully swinging ensembles with the kazoo
> wailing away through it.  Napoleon made a couple of 10" LPs, one on Decca
> and one on Columbia, and there is at least one good kazoo solo on them.
>
> * I just thought it was time for a modicum of respect for the kazoo.
>
> Jim Beebe
>