Word: kazoos
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Tooting the Kazoo. "The Groaner," as ; he sometimes calls himself, was born in 1904, and grew up in Spokane, Wash. with his father, a fun-loving bookkeeper who played the mandolin, his Irish mother, a somewhat sterner type who often took a disciplinary switch to her children, and six other little Crosbys. He had, he says, a youth notable for dozens of odd jobs, a night in jail (for belting a police car with cinnamon buns), a day when he hurled the leg of lamb on the family board at his brother Everett, an intense hatred of mathematics, a propensity...
...sets the mood with chapter headings that consist of fine, nostalgic bits of flotsam from the Bissell memory (e.g., "No knowledge of music is necessary, merely place kazoo to lips and hum your favorite tune''1). His love scenes, which he plainly relishes, are never tedious. ("'The question is,' I said into the sweet smelling hair, 'whether a man of my age could become a Hotel Executive without any previous training. Your hair smells like springtime in Comiskey Park.' ") And the conversation around the plant sounds almost as if it had been taken down...
...faces that she had found surefire in attracting her father's attention. She played billiards on the third floor with her brothers, and harmonized in the music room with her sisters. She beat out hot rhythms on her brother's trap drum and played aggressive solos on kazoo, ukulele and banjo. She admired and envied her stately older sister Clara ("The Duchess"), and made life both miserable and exciting for her younger sisters, Mary Jane and Josephine. Mary Jane recalls: "I can't count the number of dark closets Ros locked...
...Clique Club opened its doors and let the mob in. Buddy Rich, a Tommy Dorsey alumnus and bop fellow traveler, shot spectacular explosions from his drums, and a velvet-skinned Negro named Sarah Vaughan squeezed her toothpaste-smooth voice out amongst the customers, singing in a style like a kazoo. In four other cities, new-style nightclubs had opened, with a no-dancing policy, and with bleachers for serious listening...
...piece begins with a wolf call, and ends with all the instruments thrown into a corner. It is scored for ukulele, kazoo, hogan-twanger (wooden box and hacksaw blades), cardboard box, seal barks and an Indian elephant bell. It has words like this...