August 22, 2025 • 20 mins
It’s the instrument anyone can play, and just about everyone has. The kazoo may look like a toy, but its buzzing voice has a history that winds from 19th-century parlors to marching bands, jug bands, and even the stage of Carnegie Hall. In this episode of The History Of, we explore where the kazoo came from, why it caught on, and how this simple tube became a surprisingly important part of music history.
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The History Of is your daily dose of weird, wonderful, and occasionally ridiculous history. Each episode takes one topic an object, a place, a job, a trend and unpacks the surprising story behind it. No homework, no boring lectures, just history you’ll actually want to share.
A podcast for all ages, if you enjoy please share it and leave a review because that tells me you want more.
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New Episodes: Mon/Wed/Fri
(If people enjoy, and feedback via reviews and ratings is good, will release daily)
The History Of is your daily dose of weird, wonderful, and occasionally ridiculous history. Each episode takes one topic an object, a place, a job, a trend and unpacks the surprising story behind it. No homework, no boring lectures, just history you’ll actually want to share.
A podcast for all ages, if you enjoy please share it and leave a review because that tells me you want more.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-history-of--6664775/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to the History of the Show for
anyone who flunked history but still wants to impress at
Trivia Night. Each day we take one topic, an object,
a place, a job, a trend and uncover the weird, messy,
and sometimes ridiculous truth behind it. No homework, just history
you'll actually want to tell people about. Ready, let's get
(00:30):
into it. The history of the kazoo before it became
the sound of fourth grade talent shows, clown noses and
people who have given up on taking things seriously. The
kazoo had a past, a long one and surprisingly one
that spans continence, ceremonies, ancient cultures, and, believe it or not,
(00:51):
a principle of acoustics that dates back thousands of years.
This is the story of how a goofy buzzing tube
somehow came to hum its way into musical history. The
secret behind the kazoo isn't in the plastic tube or
the funny noise it makes when you blow into it.
The real magic is a simple, almost prehistoric principle, the
vibrating membrane. In technical terms, it's called a merlatin. In
(01:14):
everyday terms, it's a thin film that buzzes when air
passes over it. It doesn't create sound on its own.
You have to hum into it. It just transforms your
voice into something that sounds like a saxophone with hay fever,
and that core idea goes way way back. In parts
of Sub Saharan Africa, voice altering instruments using membranes were
(01:34):
a serious part of spiritual life. These weren't party tricks.
They were used in ceremonies, rituals, and storytelling. Take the
zobo for example. It's a traditional African merlitan, usually made
from animal horn or wood, with a thin vibrating membrane
over the end. The sound is unmistakable nasal buzzing hypnotic.
It could mimic spirits, It could distort a voice into
(01:57):
something uncanny and otherworldly. These weren't to These were tools
of cultural power. The buzzing sound carried weight. It could
command attention, evoke the ancestors, or signal transitions between the
earthly and spiritual realms. Mirilton instruments weren't limited to Africa either.
Variations have shown up across cultures and continents. Ancient Chinese
(02:19):
and Japanese musicians had similar devices, sometimes incorporated into flutes.
The idea was always the same, take the human voice
and make it stranger, more commanding, more magical. So if
you thought the kazoo was just a modern novelty, it's
actually riding on the coattails of some pretty serious spiritual ancestors.
(02:39):
Fast forward a few centuries, and the idea of the
buzzing voice transformer crosses the Atlantic. African musical traditions came
to the United States through the forced migration of enslaved people.
Their music, rhythms, instruments, and techniques adapted and evolved under
extreme conditions, but the foundations held strong. You can trace
(02:59):
the influence of these traditions through gosp blues, jazz, and
even the earliest forms of American folk music, and nestled
somewhere in all of that is the humble ancestor of
the Kazoo enter Alabama, the state, not the band, specifically,
somewhere around Macon, Alabama. In the eighteen forties, something happened
that would change the course of kazoo history forever, or
(03:21):
at least give it a more modern origin story. According
to the legend, which may or may not be true,
but let's enjoy it. Anyway, a black man named Alabama
Vest approached a German American clockmaker named Thaddeus von Klegg
with an idea. Vest had the concept for a new
instrument based on the African murltons, von Klegg had the
mechanical know how to make it work. Together, they built
(03:44):
the first metal kazoo. Now did this actually happen? Historians
can't find much hard evidence. There are no patent documents,
no original blueprints, no surviving instruments stamped with Vest and
von Klegg original kazoo co. But the story has stuck
around for a reason. It fits. It makes sense culturally,
(04:05):
musically and mechanically, And even if the names were added
later to help sell a few extra novelty items, the
idea of the kazoo emerging from African American musical creativity
and German engineering sounds just about right for mid nineteenth
century America. The design they allegedly came up with was
a tube shaped instrument made of metal, usually brass, with
(04:26):
a small circular opening covered by a wax paper membrane.
When you hum into the larger end, the vibrations from
your voice passed through the membrane, making it buzz like
a confused wasp trapped in a beer can that sound
weird as it was caught on. The early kazoo was
easy to play, impossible to take too seriously, and cheap
to make. And it had one more advantage. It was loud,
(04:49):
not in the way a trumpet is loud, but loud
in the sense that it cuts through noise. It's attension grabbing,
like a honk in a library. You can't ignore it.
In fact, its very silliness became part of its charm.
The kazoo made people laugh. It added comic flare to songs.
It let folks who couldn't read music or master complicated
instruments still join in the fun. It was accessible, democratic,
(05:12):
and funny all at once. It quickly found a home
in jug bands, medicine shows, and street performances. And while
the kazoo never quite earned a seat in the symphony,
it had something just as powerful, novelty. It didn't need
to be refined. It was its own joke, and in
a country where musical traditions were blending, borrowing, and clashing
(05:33):
all the time, the kazoo fit right in. It was southern,
it was silly, and it was perfect for anyone who
wanted to be heard without actually knowing what they were doing.
But long before it became a staple in kids, gallup
party bags and comedy acts, the kazoo carried cultural weight.
It came from a deeper place, a world where buzzing
(05:54):
voices meant communication with the divine. The transformation of that
concept into a five cent gag gift doesn't make it
less interesting. If anything, it makes it more so. How
many instruments can say they were once used to speak
with the ancestors and now appear in cartoons as the
official soundtrack of Slipping on a Banana peel. By the
(06:15):
late eighteen hundreds, kazoos were being manufactured more formally. The
first kazoo factory opened in Eden, New York in nineteen sixteen,
and it's still operating today. They called their product the
Original American Kazoo. It was made of metal and came
with instructions that basically boiled down to hum, don't blow.
That's always the trick with a kazoo. Blow into it
(06:36):
and you get nothing. Hum and it sings. And that's
the point. The kazoo doesn't make its own sound. It
relies on your voice. It distorts, it reshapes, it makes
it weird, but it's still your voice underneath. That idea
of transformation, of tweaking something familiar until it becomes something
entirely new, has always been at the heart of the
(06:56):
Kazoo's strange appeal. So from the mirlitons of Africa to
a tin whistle in Alabama, the Kazoo's journey is a
story of cultural transmission, adaptation, and low cost fun. It's
been used in sacred rituals and slapstick comedy. It's been serious,
and it's been stupid, and somehow it's still here. In
the next chapter, we'll watch the Kazoo graduate from saloons
(07:18):
and sidewalks to vaudeville stages and jazz records. It's time
for the Kazoo to make some noise for real. If
you walk into the small town of Eden, New York today,
you might not suspect that it was once the metallic
heartbeat of one of the oddest instruments in American music history.
But if you follow the faint, buzzing sound through town,
you'll land on a legacy forged in tin laughter and
(07:41):
a bit of nasal irreverence. Because this is where the kazoo. Yes,
the kazoo became big business. The kazoo's jumped from folk
invention to commercial phenomenon happened just as America was learning
how to mass produce whimsy. It was the late nineteenth century,
and the Industrial Revolution had already found ways to thank
out everything from corsets to chewing gum. So why not
(08:03):
add an affordable musical instrument to the mix, one that
didn't require talent training or breath control. You just hum
and the kazoo does the rest. It's essentially musical delegation.
By the eighteen eighties, the kazoo was making the leap
from handmade novelty to factory made gadget. This is where
Eden comes in. A small workshop in the town began
(08:25):
producing metal kazoos at scale. The business was originally called
the Original American Kazoo Company, and they meant it. They
cranked out kazoos by the thousands, then the millions, creating
an instrument that was part toy, part satire, and part
cultural phenomenon. Their factory became the kazoo capital of the world,
mostly because no one else wanted the title. What made
(08:48):
the kazoo work as a product was its simplicity. It
had no valves, no reeds, no strings to break or stretch.
It didn't go out of tune. You didn't need to
take lessons or own a piano bench. It was made
of thin, bent metal with a vibrating membrane, and that
was enough. It was the democratization of musical expression, just
not the kind that won awards. Kazoos fit right into
(09:11):
the American appetite for novelty in vaudeville theaters, Comedians used
them to punctuate punchlines. Jug bands, especially in the American South,
adopted them for their buzzing rhythmic tone. In these bands,
the kazoo was just one of several homemade or low
cost instruments that came together to create a rich, foot
stomping sound. It played a serious role in music that
(09:33):
wasn't taking itself too seriously. The kazoo helped people make do,
make noise, and make fun. And then came the parades.
If you grew up in small town America in the
early twentieth century, odds are good you've heard a kazoo
in motion, specifically in a local parade played by a
boy scout troop, or in a ragtag band of costumed clowns.
(09:54):
It was loud enough to carry, funny enough to amuse,
and simple enough that everyone could join in. Something almost
poetic about an instrument that makes people laugh just by
existing and still manages to be heard over a marching
drum line. The Great Depression was oddly good for the kazoo.
At a time when money was tight and joy was
in short supply, here came this cheap, silly little thing
(10:16):
that didn't ask much of you. You could buy one
for a few cents, and suddenly you were in a band.
Music became accessible without pretense. The kazoo didn't pretend to
be refined, It didn't aspire to the concert hall. It
was the musical equivalent of a whoopee cushion, lowbrow, funny,
and proudly self aware. And yet that same charm started
(10:37):
working against it. As America crawled out of the Depression
and into the more image conscious mid century, the kazoo's
reputation started to suffer. It became a punchline, a toy,
something handed out at birthday parties or stuck into Christmas stockings,
while instruments like the guitar were being rebranded as cool
romantic or rebellious. The kazoo stayed stubbornly silly. It didn't
(11:00):
grow up, It didn't evolve. It hummed its same weird
little tune while the rest of the orchestra moved on.
That didn't stop people from trying to give it a
second act. There were occasional flares of interest, recordings that
featured the kazoo for comedic effect, or artists who leaned
into its absurdity as a kind of commentary. Frank Zappa
naturally gave it a whirl. The Muppets loved it. It
(11:23):
showed up in cartoons, skits, novelty albums, and offbeat commercials,
but it never fully escaped its role as the class
clown of the music world. Meanwhile, the Eden Kazoo Factory
kept churning. It became a tourist attraction in its own right,
complete with the Kazoo Museum. You can still visit it
today and see the old metal presses and displays of
(11:44):
vintage models. It's kitchy, but oddly heartwarming, a reminder that
not everything has to be grand to be good. What's
strange is how little the kazoo has changed, while most
instruments have evolved over time, getting fancier, more versatile, or
technologically enhanced, the kazoo has remained stubbornly basic. It's the
same buzzing tube it was in the eighteen hundreds, just
(12:07):
now made in plastic instead of metal. That might be
part of its staying power. It knows what it is.
It's not trying to be elegant, it's not trying to
impress your jazz instructor. It just wants to buzz. And
for all its low status, the kazoo has earned a
strange kind of respect, not the Grammy winning kind, but
the still here after all this time kind. It survived wars, recessions,
(12:29):
musical trends, and waves of snobbery. It's been mocked, ignored,
and left out of serious musical conversations, and yet, like
a cheerful barnacle on the hull of Western culture, it
hangs on. So the next time someone rolls their eyes
at a kazoo, remember this. It's older than rock and roll,
more democratic than the piano, and cheaper than sheet music.
(12:51):
It made millions of people laugh, dance, and hum along
when they had almost nothing else, and it did all
that without even trying to sound good. That's the story
of how the kazoo went from tinshop trinket to mass
market legend. In the next chapter, we'll find out how
it became the mascot for kitsch, the toy that refused
to die, and the unexpected soundtrack to everything from toy
(13:12):
commercials to viral memes. By the nineteen fifties, the kazoo
was already walking a fine line between musical instrument and
comic prop. It had gone from parlor novelty to vaudeville
sidekick to childhood's stocking stuffer, and somewhere along the way,
people started treating it less like a real instrument and
more like a party joke you blew into when someone
turned fifty. But the kazoo wasn't done yet. It just
(13:35):
needed to find its place in a world that didn't
take it seriously, which frankly suited the kazoo just fine.
If the early twentieth century had been the kazoo's rise,
the mid century was its fall, but not a dramatic crash,
more of a slow, silly slide into the realm of kitsch.
The big shift was cultural. American music was changing. Jazz
(13:56):
got more sophisticated, rock and roll roared onto the scene.
The kauzz zoo, simple, buzzing, homemade, sounded like a relic
in the age of Elvis and electric guitars. The kazoo
didn't have a seat at the table. It had to
sneak in through the kitchen window of comedy, and that's
exactly what it did. Television variety shows of the nineteen
(14:17):
fifties and sixties were full of novelty acts, and the
kazoo made regular appearances as the comedic relief. The idea
of someone playing Flight of the Bumblebee on a kazoo
while dressed as a bumblebee wasn't just plausible, it was
practically expected. It was cheap, it was funny, and it
made a distinctive noise that cut through a TV speaker
like a tiny foghorn of chaos. Children's programming leaned hard
(14:41):
into kazoo comedy. Cartoons like The Flintstones and Looney Tunes
loved slipping in a kazoo to underline a pratfall or
a ridiculous moment. Its buzzing rasp became a stand in
for absurdity. If you heard a kazoo something stupid or
at least stupid adjacent was happening. It became a sonic
wink to the audience. And then there were the novelty songs,
(15:04):
the kind your uncle insists on playing at barbecues. Songs
with names like Kazoo Serenade or March of the Kazoos
that proudly wore their silliness on their sleeves. Bands like
Spike Jones and his City Slickers used the kazoo as
part of a full comedic assault, sound effects, fake hiccups,
and musical mayhem included. They weren't mocking the kazoo, they
(15:25):
were celebrating it as an agent of chaos. The nineteen
seventies and eighties took that chaos and dialed it up.
The kazoo found a strange, wobbly home in underground comedy
and counterculture. As mainstream music got slicker, the kazoo stood
out as charmingly defiant. It didn't require talent training or
even good breath control. Anyone could pick one up and
(15:46):
make noise. That made it democratic also annoying, which, depending
on your sense of humor, was either a bug or
a feature. It also helped that the kazoo was cheap.
You could buy one at a gas station, a party store,
you're tuck next to the checkout counter at a novelty shop.
You didn't need a music store, just spare change and
a tolerance for being that guy at a party. As
(16:08):
an instrument, it was unserious. As a prop, it was unbeatable.
By the nineteen nineties, the kazoo had fully embraced its
punchline status. It was the go to joke instrument. Want
to make your cover of Bohemian Rhapsody worse at a
kazoo solo? Want to ruin a romantic moment in a movie,
play a kazoo in the background. Want a signal that
(16:30):
your character has lost their mind, have them play the
kazoo badly at an inappropriate time. And Yet, somewhere along
the way, the kazoo became cool again. Not cool in
the leather jacket motorcycle sense, cool in the ironic self aware.
I know this is ridiculous, but I'm doing it anyway.
Since college humor groups and internet sketch comedians embraced the
(16:51):
kazoo as part of the absurdist revival, YouTube was flooded
with kazoo parodies. TikTok took it even further, you've got
teenagers doing kazoo renditions of classical music or recreating entire
film soundtracks using only their nose and a plastic kazoo.
It's weird, chaotic, joyful, and very online. There are even
serious kazoo bands, and I say serious with a little asterisk,
(17:15):
because even the most committed kazoo group knows they're playing
a buzzy plastic pipe. But that doesn't mean they're not good.
Some kazoo ensembles have full multipart arrangements, percussion, costume themes.
They play Bach and Beyonce with equal enthusiasm, and they
often pack a room, not because people expect greatness, but
because people expect fun. Then there's the merch. You can
(17:38):
now buy led lit kazoos, titanium kazoos, gold plated kazoos.
There's an app that mimics the sound of a kazoo
in case you want to buzz in meetings but forgot
your physical instrument. Kazoos are printed on T shirts, turned
into belt buckles, and sold at renaissance fares as barred flutes.
The kazoo went from humble hummer to full on brandid
(18:00):
New York. Remember that town from chapter two, the one
that turned kazoo manufacturing into a local industry. It's still
holding the torch. Eden proudly calls itself the kazoo Capital
of the world. There's a kazoo museum, complete with historic displays,
vintage models, and the original machinery used to crank them out.
By the thousands. Tourists show up, take the guided tour,
(18:23):
and walk out with a kazoo and a slightly confused
look on their face. Because, let's be honest, how many
towns have built an identity around a buzzing joke pipe.
And that's part of the magic. The kazoo knows exactly
what it is. It doesn't pretend to be elegant or
refined or high brow. It's not trying to be the
next saxophone. It's the underdog of instruments, humble, goofy, and
(18:46):
joyful in its defiance of seriousness. It also taps into
something deeper. The Kazoo's charm lies in its accessibility. Anyone
can play it. There's no barrier to entry, no wrong notes,
no expensive lessons. Just breathe, hum and buzz your heart out.
It's inclusive in a way most instruments aren't, and that's
no small thing. Sure it's a punchline, but it's a
(19:08):
punchline with staying power. The kazoo has survived wars, depressions,
musical revolutions, and the rise of auto tune. It has
outlived the eight track, the laser disc, and maybe even
the flute solo. It's still here, still buzzing, and in
an age when everything is optimized, curated and algorithmically polished,
maybe we need the kazoo more than ever. It reminds
(19:30):
us that sound doesn't have to be perfect to be fun,
that music can be silly, that sometimes the best way
to cope with the noise of life is to make
a little more noise of your own, deliberate, playful, and
entirely off key. So let's raise a kazoo to the kazoo.
It may never headline a symphony, but it's headlined plenty
of memories, birthday parties, comedy bits, campfire songs, viral videos.
(19:54):
It's made millions of people laugh, and it's done it
without taking itself seriously for a single second, which frankly
is kind of heroic.
Hello, and welcome to the History of the Show for
anyone who flunked history but still wants to impress at
Trivia Night. Each day we take one topic, an object,
a place, a job, a trend and uncover the weird, messy,
and sometimes ridiculous truth behind it. No homework, just history
you'll actually want to tell people about. Ready, let's get
(00:30):
into it. The history of the kazoo before it became
the sound of fourth grade talent shows, clown noses and
people who have given up on taking things seriously. The
kazoo had a past, a long one and surprisingly one
that spans continence, ceremonies, ancient cultures, and, believe it or not,
(00:51):
a principle of acoustics that dates back thousands of years.
This is the story of how a goofy buzzing tube
somehow came to hum its way into musical history. The
secret behind the kazoo isn't in the plastic tube or
the funny noise it makes when you blow into it.
The real magic is a simple, almost prehistoric principle, the
vibrating membrane. In technical terms, it's called a merlatin. In
(01:14):
everyday terms, it's a thin film that buzzes when air
passes over it. It doesn't create sound on its own.
You have to hum into it. It just transforms your
voice into something that sounds like a saxophone with hay fever,
and that core idea goes way way back. In parts
of Sub Saharan Africa, voice altering instruments using membranes were
(01:34):
a serious part of spiritual life. These weren't party tricks.
They were used in ceremonies, rituals, and storytelling. Take the
zobo for example. It's a traditional African merlitan, usually made
from animal horn or wood, with a thin vibrating membrane
over the end. The sound is unmistakable nasal buzzing hypnotic.
It could mimic spirits, It could distort a voice into
(01:57):
something uncanny and otherworldly. These weren't to These were tools
of cultural power. The buzzing sound carried weight. It could
command attention, evoke the ancestors, or signal transitions between the
earthly and spiritual realms. Mirilton instruments weren't limited to Africa either.
Variations have shown up across cultures and continents. Ancient Chinese
(02:19):
and Japanese musicians had similar devices, sometimes incorporated into flutes.
The idea was always the same, take the human voice
and make it stranger, more commanding, more magical. So if
you thought the kazoo was just a modern novelty, it's
actually riding on the coattails of some pretty serious spiritual ancestors.
(02:39):
Fast forward a few centuries, and the idea of the
buzzing voice transformer crosses the Atlantic. African musical traditions came
to the United States through the forced migration of enslaved people.
Their music, rhythms, instruments, and techniques adapted and evolved under
extreme conditions, but the foundations held strong. You can trace
(02:59):
the influence of these traditions through gosp blues, jazz, and
even the earliest forms of American folk music, and nestled
somewhere in all of that is the humble ancestor of
the Kazoo enter Alabama, the state, not the band, specifically,
somewhere around Macon, Alabama. In the eighteen forties, something happened
that would change the course of kazoo history forever, or
(03:21):
at least give it a more modern origin story. According
to the legend, which may or may not be true,
but let's enjoy it. Anyway, a black man named Alabama
Vest approached a German American clockmaker named Thaddeus von Klegg
with an idea. Vest had the concept for a new
instrument based on the African murltons, von Klegg had the
mechanical know how to make it work. Together, they built
(03:44):
the first metal kazoo. Now did this actually happen? Historians
can't find much hard evidence. There are no patent documents,
no original blueprints, no surviving instruments stamped with Vest and
von Klegg original kazoo co. But the story has stuck
around for a reason. It fits. It makes sense culturally,
(04:05):
musically and mechanically, And even if the names were added
later to help sell a few extra novelty items, the
idea of the kazoo emerging from African American musical creativity
and German engineering sounds just about right for mid nineteenth
century America. The design they allegedly came up with was
a tube shaped instrument made of metal, usually brass, with
(04:26):
a small circular opening covered by a wax paper membrane.
When you hum into the larger end, the vibrations from
your voice passed through the membrane, making it buzz like
a confused wasp trapped in a beer can that sound
weird as it was caught on. The early kazoo was
easy to play, impossible to take too seriously, and cheap
to make. And it had one more advantage. It was loud,
(04:49):
not in the way a trumpet is loud, but loud
in the sense that it cuts through noise. It's attension grabbing,
like a honk in a library. You can't ignore it.
In fact, its very silliness became part of its charm.
The kazoo made people laugh. It added comic flare to songs.
It let folks who couldn't read music or master complicated
instruments still join in the fun. It was accessible, democratic,
(05:12):
and funny all at once. It quickly found a home
in jug bands, medicine shows, and street performances. And while
the kazoo never quite earned a seat in the symphony,
it had something just as powerful, novelty. It didn't need
to be refined. It was its own joke, and in
a country where musical traditions were blending, borrowing, and clashing
(05:33):
all the time, the kazoo fit right in. It was southern,
it was silly, and it was perfect for anyone who
wanted to be heard without actually knowing what they were doing.
But long before it became a staple in kids, gallup
party bags and comedy acts, the kazoo carried cultural weight.
It came from a deeper place, a world where buzzing
(05:54):
voices meant communication with the divine. The transformation of that
concept into a five cent gag gift doesn't make it
less interesting. If anything, it makes it more so. How
many instruments can say they were once used to speak
with the ancestors and now appear in cartoons as the
official soundtrack of Slipping on a Banana peel. By the
(06:15):
late eighteen hundreds, kazoos were being manufactured more formally. The
first kazoo factory opened in Eden, New York in nineteen sixteen,
and it's still operating today. They called their product the
Original American Kazoo. It was made of metal and came
with instructions that basically boiled down to hum, don't blow.
That's always the trick with a kazoo. Blow into it
(06:36):
and you get nothing. Hum and it sings. And that's
the point. The kazoo doesn't make its own sound. It
relies on your voice. It distorts, it reshapes, it makes
it weird, but it's still your voice underneath. That idea
of transformation, of tweaking something familiar until it becomes something
entirely new, has always been at the heart of the
(06:56):
Kazoo's strange appeal. So from the mirlitons of Africa to
a tin whistle in Alabama, the Kazoo's journey is a
story of cultural transmission, adaptation, and low cost fun. It's
been used in sacred rituals and slapstick comedy. It's been serious,
and it's been stupid, and somehow it's still here. In
the next chapter, we'll watch the Kazoo graduate from saloons
(07:18):
and sidewalks to vaudeville stages and jazz records. It's time
for the Kazoo to make some noise for real. If
you walk into the small town of Eden, New York today,
you might not suspect that it was once the metallic
heartbeat of one of the oddest instruments in American music history.
But if you follow the faint, buzzing sound through town,
you'll land on a legacy forged in tin laughter and
(07:41):
a bit of nasal irreverence. Because this is where the kazoo. Yes,
the kazoo became big business. The kazoo's jumped from folk
invention to commercial phenomenon happened just as America was learning
how to mass produce whimsy. It was the late nineteenth century,
and the Industrial Revolution had already found ways to thank
out everything from corsets to chewing gum. So why not
(08:03):
add an affordable musical instrument to the mix, one that
didn't require talent training or breath control. You just hum
and the kazoo does the rest. It's essentially musical delegation.
By the eighteen eighties, the kazoo was making the leap
from handmade novelty to factory made gadget. This is where
Eden comes in. A small workshop in the town began
(08:25):
producing metal kazoos at scale. The business was originally called
the Original American Kazoo Company, and they meant it. They
cranked out kazoos by the thousands, then the millions, creating
an instrument that was part toy, part satire, and part
cultural phenomenon. Their factory became the kazoo capital of the world,
mostly because no one else wanted the title. What made
(08:48):
the kazoo work as a product was its simplicity. It
had no valves, no reeds, no strings to break or stretch.
It didn't go out of tune. You didn't need to
take lessons or own a piano bench. It was made
of thin, bent metal with a vibrating membrane, and that
was enough. It was the democratization of musical expression, just
not the kind that won awards. Kazoos fit right into
(09:11):
the American appetite for novelty in vaudeville theaters, Comedians used
them to punctuate punchlines. Jug bands, especially in the American South,
adopted them for their buzzing rhythmic tone. In these bands,
the kazoo was just one of several homemade or low
cost instruments that came together to create a rich, foot
stomping sound. It played a serious role in music that
(09:33):
wasn't taking itself too seriously. The kazoo helped people make do,
make noise, and make fun. And then came the parades.
If you grew up in small town America in the
early twentieth century, odds are good you've heard a kazoo
in motion, specifically in a local parade played by a
boy scout troop, or in a ragtag band of costumed clowns.
(09:54):
It was loud enough to carry, funny enough to amuse,
and simple enough that everyone could join in. Something almost
poetic about an instrument that makes people laugh just by
existing and still manages to be heard over a marching
drum line. The Great Depression was oddly good for the kazoo.
At a time when money was tight and joy was
in short supply, here came this cheap, silly little thing
(10:16):
that didn't ask much of you. You could buy one
for a few cents, and suddenly you were in a band.
Music became accessible without pretense. The kazoo didn't pretend to
be refined, It didn't aspire to the concert hall. It
was the musical equivalent of a whoopee cushion, lowbrow, funny,
and proudly self aware. And yet that same charm started
(10:37):
working against it. As America crawled out of the Depression
and into the more image conscious mid century, the kazoo's
reputation started to suffer. It became a punchline, a toy,
something handed out at birthday parties or stuck into Christmas stockings,
while instruments like the guitar were being rebranded as cool
romantic or rebellious. The kazoo stayed stubbornly silly. It didn't
(11:00):
grow up, It didn't evolve. It hummed its same weird
little tune while the rest of the orchestra moved on.
That didn't stop people from trying to give it a
second act. There were occasional flares of interest, recordings that
featured the kazoo for comedic effect, or artists who leaned
into its absurdity as a kind of commentary. Frank Zappa
naturally gave it a whirl. The Muppets loved it. It
(11:23):
showed up in cartoons, skits, novelty albums, and offbeat commercials,
but it never fully escaped its role as the class
clown of the music world. Meanwhile, the Eden Kazoo Factory
kept churning. It became a tourist attraction in its own right,
complete with the Kazoo Museum. You can still visit it
today and see the old metal presses and displays of
(11:44):
vintage models. It's kitchy, but oddly heartwarming, a reminder that
not everything has to be grand to be good. What's
strange is how little the kazoo has changed, while most
instruments have evolved over time, getting fancier, more versatile, or
technologically enhanced, the kazoo has remained stubbornly basic. It's the
same buzzing tube it was in the eighteen hundreds, just
(12:07):
now made in plastic instead of metal. That might be
part of its staying power. It knows what it is.
It's not trying to be elegant, it's not trying to
impress your jazz instructor. It just wants to buzz. And
for all its low status, the kazoo has earned a
strange kind of respect, not the Grammy winning kind, but
the still here after all this time kind. It survived wars, recessions,
(12:29):
musical trends, and waves of snobbery. It's been mocked, ignored,
and left out of serious musical conversations, and yet, like
a cheerful barnacle on the hull of Western culture, it
hangs on. So the next time someone rolls their eyes
at a kazoo, remember this. It's older than rock and roll,
more democratic than the piano, and cheaper than sheet music.
(12:51):
It made millions of people laugh, dance, and hum along
when they had almost nothing else, and it did all
that without even trying to sound good. That's the story
of how the kazoo went from tinshop trinket to mass
market legend. In the next chapter, we'll find out how
it became the mascot for kitsch, the toy that refused
to die, and the unexpected soundtrack to everything from toy
(13:12):
commercials to viral memes. By the nineteen fifties, the kazoo
was already walking a fine line between musical instrument and
comic prop. It had gone from parlor novelty to vaudeville
sidekick to childhood's stocking stuffer, and somewhere along the way,
people started treating it less like a real instrument and
more like a party joke you blew into when someone
turned fifty. But the kazoo wasn't done yet. It just
(13:35):
needed to find its place in a world that didn't
take it seriously, which frankly suited the kazoo just fine.
If the early twentieth century had been the kazoo's rise,
the mid century was its fall, but not a dramatic crash,
more of a slow, silly slide into the realm of kitsch.
The big shift was cultural. American music was changing. Jazz
(13:56):
got more sophisticated, rock and roll roared onto the scene.
The kauzz zoo, simple, buzzing, homemade, sounded like a relic
in the age of Elvis and electric guitars. The kazoo
didn't have a seat at the table. It had to
sneak in through the kitchen window of comedy, and that's
exactly what it did. Television variety shows of the nineteen
(14:17):
fifties and sixties were full of novelty acts, and the
kazoo made regular appearances as the comedic relief. The idea
of someone playing Flight of the Bumblebee on a kazoo
while dressed as a bumblebee wasn't just plausible, it was
practically expected. It was cheap, it was funny, and it
made a distinctive noise that cut through a TV speaker
like a tiny foghorn of chaos. Children's programming leaned hard
(14:41):
into kazoo comedy. Cartoons like The Flintstones and Looney Tunes
loved slipping in a kazoo to underline a pratfall or
a ridiculous moment. Its buzzing rasp became a stand in
for absurdity. If you heard a kazoo something stupid or
at least stupid adjacent was happening. It became a sonic
wink to the audience. And then there were the novelty songs,
(15:04):
the kind your uncle insists on playing at barbecues. Songs
with names like Kazoo Serenade or March of the Kazoos
that proudly wore their silliness on their sleeves. Bands like
Spike Jones and his City Slickers used the kazoo as
part of a full comedic assault, sound effects, fake hiccups,
and musical mayhem included. They weren't mocking the kazoo, they
(15:25):
were celebrating it as an agent of chaos. The nineteen
seventies and eighties took that chaos and dialed it up.
The kazoo found a strange, wobbly home in underground comedy
and counterculture. As mainstream music got slicker, the kazoo stood
out as charmingly defiant. It didn't require talent training or
even good breath control. Anyone could pick one up and
(15:46):
make noise. That made it democratic also annoying, which, depending
on your sense of humor, was either a bug or
a feature. It also helped that the kazoo was cheap.
You could buy one at a gas station, a party store,
you're tuck next to the checkout counter at a novelty shop.
You didn't need a music store, just spare change and
a tolerance for being that guy at a party. As
(16:08):
an instrument, it was unserious. As a prop, it was unbeatable.
By the nineteen nineties, the kazoo had fully embraced its
punchline status. It was the go to joke instrument. Want
to make your cover of Bohemian Rhapsody worse at a
kazoo solo? Want to ruin a romantic moment in a movie,
play a kazoo in the background. Want a signal that
(16:30):
your character has lost their mind, have them play the
kazoo badly at an inappropriate time. And Yet, somewhere along
the way, the kazoo became cool again. Not cool in
the leather jacket motorcycle sense, cool in the ironic self aware.
I know this is ridiculous, but I'm doing it anyway.
Since college humor groups and internet sketch comedians embraced the
(16:51):
kazoo as part of the absurdist revival, YouTube was flooded
with kazoo parodies. TikTok took it even further, you've got
teenagers doing kazoo renditions of classical music or recreating entire
film soundtracks using only their nose and a plastic kazoo.
It's weird, chaotic, joyful, and very online. There are even
serious kazoo bands, and I say serious with a little asterisk,
(17:15):
because even the most committed kazoo group knows they're playing
a buzzy plastic pipe. But that doesn't mean they're not good.
Some kazoo ensembles have full multipart arrangements, percussion, costume themes.
They play Bach and Beyonce with equal enthusiasm, and they
often pack a room, not because people expect greatness, but
because people expect fun. Then there's the merch. You can
(17:38):
now buy led lit kazoos, titanium kazoos, gold plated kazoos.
There's an app that mimics the sound of a kazoo
in case you want to buzz in meetings but forgot
your physical instrument. Kazoos are printed on T shirts, turned
into belt buckles, and sold at renaissance fares as barred flutes.
The kazoo went from humble hummer to full on brandid
(18:00):
New York. Remember that town from chapter two, the one
that turned kazoo manufacturing into a local industry. It's still
holding the torch. Eden proudly calls itself the kazoo Capital
of the world. There's a kazoo museum, complete with historic displays,
vintage models, and the original machinery used to crank them out.
By the thousands. Tourists show up, take the guided tour,
(18:23):
and walk out with a kazoo and a slightly confused
look on their face. Because, let's be honest, how many
towns have built an identity around a buzzing joke pipe.
And that's part of the magic. The kazoo knows exactly
what it is. It doesn't pretend to be elegant or
refined or high brow. It's not trying to be the
next saxophone. It's the underdog of instruments, humble, goofy, and
(18:46):
joyful in its defiance of seriousness. It also taps into
something deeper. The Kazoo's charm lies in its accessibility. Anyone
can play it. There's no barrier to entry, no wrong notes,
no expensive lessons. Just breathe, hum and buzz your heart out.
It's inclusive in a way most instruments aren't, and that's
no small thing. Sure it's a punchline, but it's a
(19:08):
punchline with staying power. The kazoo has survived wars, depressions,
musical revolutions, and the rise of auto tune. It has
outlived the eight track, the laser disc, and maybe even
the flute solo. It's still here, still buzzing, and in
an age when everything is optimized, curated and algorithmically polished,
maybe we need the kazoo more than ever. It reminds
(19:30):
us that sound doesn't have to be perfect to be fun,
that music can be silly, that sometimes the best way
to cope with the noise of life is to make
a little more noise of your own, deliberate, playful, and
entirely off key. So let's raise a kazoo to the kazoo.
It may never headline a symphony, but it's headlined plenty
of memories, birthday parties, comedy bits, campfire songs, viral videos.
(19:54):
It's made millions of people laugh, and it's done it
without taking itself seriously for a single second, which frankly
is kind of heroic.
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