Mike Orr

Handmade Music Factory


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the blues tell stories about life experiences

      revolving around race, love, and social class,

      then these instruments provide the background

      upon which those stories were sung.”

      8

      Handmade Music FactorY

      It is no accident that at the same time African

      Americans were creating the lyrical and musical roots

      for the blues, they were also creating their own ad hoc

      musical instruments. The earliest extant examples of cigar

      box guitars, for example, stem from this period (although

      reported history dates them to just before the Civil War).

      By the 1880s, plans to build simple cigar box banjoes

      were appearing in print. While there were, of course, white

      children who also built their own homemade instruments,

      the particular poverty of the southern Black made such

      creations more of a necessity than a social curiosity. If you

      were a young southern Black growing up on a plantation,

      and you wanted to learn to play guitar, it was almost a

      given that you’d have to make one yourself. And this is

      precisely what Robert Johnson, and so many before and

      after him, did.

      Johnson’s childhood friends recall how he took three

      strings of baling wire and nailed them to the side of the

      sharecropping shack he shared with his mother, Julia,

      and stepfather, Dusty Willis, in Commerce, Mississippi.

      Johnson slid two bottles under the wires to increase the

      tension, and then picked out tunes on his homemade

      diddley bow. And while those same friends said they

      couldn’t make any sense out of what he was playing, no

      doubt to the young Robert it was pure music. It wasn’t

      long after that that Robert got his first guitar, but the roots

      of his music had been laid on the homemade diddley bow.

      The great slide-guitar evangelist Blind Willie Johnson

      began on a one-string cigar box guitar. Big Bill Broonzy,

      Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and so many others did likewise.

      It’s not stretching the point too far to wonder whether the

      blues would have developed as they did had it not been for

      these homemade instruments. Mike Orr does a wonderful

      job of relating this tradition to a new generation of America,

      updating some plans to include electric pickups, while still

      remaining true to the underlying impulses that gave birth

      to the instruments and the music played on them. This

      book deftly takes us through the creation of these

      instruments so we can find our own connection with these

      musical roots.

      If the blues tell stories about life experiences revolving

      around race, love, and social class, then these instruments

      provide the background upon which those stories

      were sung.

      Robert Johnson’s musical acumen came as a result

      of creating his own instrument to simulate the sound

      of a guitar. It was that zeal to find solace in music that

      comforted his soul as he lived a very transient lifestyle in

      rural Mississippi. It is that same zeal that can be shared

      through this book.

      From L to R

      Standing:

      Steven Johnson, grandson

      of Robert Johnson & VP;

      Michael Johnson, grandson

      of Robert Johnson &

      Treasurer. Seated: Ben

      L. Minnifield, VP Global

      Marketing & Media; Dr.

      Tanya Scott, VP Global

      Business Development;

      Claud Johnson, son of

      Robert Johnson & founder;

      Vasti Jackson, Artist &

      Musical Director. Painting

      by artist Earl Klatzel.

      9

      String Holes

      Resonator

      Bridge

      Sound Holes

      Tone Knob

      Volume Knob

      About this Book

      Anyone can make a musical instrument and play it

      —

      all

      it takes is some basic instruction (which you’re holding

      in your hands), some inspiration (I think you’ve already

      got that, or you wouldn’t be here!), some simple tools

      (you’ve probably got ’em already), and materials (you

      can find these at yard sales, swap meets, and even in

      the garbage). This book specializes primarily in stringed

      instruments, but there are some percussion pieces as

      well

      —

      in fact, there’s everything you need in these pages

      to create enough instruments for an entire band!

      I’d suggest starting out with the simpler accompaniment

      instruments

      —

      the One-String Washtub Bass (page 20) and

      Soup Can Diddley Bow (page 30) are quick and easy

      to build, and don’t require many materials at all. The

      chapter on stomp and scrub percussion (page 38) will

      show you how to make an electrified washboard and

      stompbox. After you’ve got those down, venture into

      guitar territory

      —

      use a cigar box or cookie tin to create an

      easy-build slide version (page