The Jazz Band era
NextBack" Raggadaggadum, rumdiggadum, that's all you have to do", she said, handing him a pair of drum sticks. The young lad stared at the somewhat crude home made sticks then repeated the rhythm on the kitchen table, "You'll do fine" said the woman. Peggy Cotterall looked after the drum section in the Jazz band, not a conventional Jazz band, but a carnival marching band. Her father who I think led the band also made drum sticks. The instrumentation of the band comprised some thirty five kazoos and about eight drummers. The lad was not quite sure how or why he had been summoned to the house for an audition. With tension mounting he had proceeded along Sillins Avenue towards the Cotterall house and had stood behind a hedge for half an hour in the rain before mustering up the courage to knock on the door. He was a strange lad, a mixture of shyness and ego and as the door opened he blurted out "I'm Bryan Thomas and I don't want to play a Kazoo". A Kazoo is a short cylindrical tin instrument of musical torture with a stretched membrane that buzzes when the player hums into it. There are various sizes in a band, and when enthusiastically played by thirtyfive not necessarily musically gifted people, they produce a nasal cacophony of mind numbing proportion.
