Ring – a – Ding – Ding / Short Snort (Organ) #7

Short Snort (Organ) 1 Minute

MOUTH-ORGAN playing is the finest breathing exercise there is, according to Mr. William Bell, of Collingwood, a clerk at the Melbourne Water Board. Mr. Bell, who is 59, attributes the fact that he’s never had a day’s illness to his 50 years of playing the mouth-organ. He showed us an impressive scroll, two and a half feet long, setting out the 43 awards he has won. He has carried off the Australian Mouth-Organ Championship three times, and still holds the title. No Australian championships have been held since 1940, but last year Mr. Bell won the N.S.W. State Championship. He has a repertoire of 500 pieces. “The Caliph of Baghdad” and “Poet and Peasant” have won him his greatest triumphs. Mr. Bell tells us that although he relies on his tongue for many of his most unusual effects, he is just as tuneful when he places the mouth-organ on his top lip (like a moustache) and plays it with his nose. He started his musical career as a euphonium player when a lad in Eddie Code’s brass band. Before the war he organised many mouth organ bands in Melbourne, including a ladies’ band of 24 players. In those days, he recalls wistfully, German and Italian mouth-organs could be bought for a few shillings. Miniature ones, an inch long, cost only 6d. Mouth-organs now coming back in the market range from about 8/6. Those with a chromatic scale start at about 32/6. But Mr. Bell can’t be persuaded to play any type of mouth-organ, but the simple, single reed instrument which sold for 3/- before the war. The brand he favored is now off the market, so he reserves his playing for special occasions. “Once a mouth-organ ‘goes,’ it’s really ‘gone.’ ” he explains.

(Australian Women’s Weekly, 28th May, 1949)

Reckon he must have been a Crackajack man!

Happy New Month Riffers & Raffers.

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Published by Harmonica Riff Raff

Broadcaster, writer, producer & session harp player.

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11 thoughts on “Ring – a – Ding – Ding / Short Snort (Organ) #7”

  1. Read your post here and then remembered that I bought a small mouth organ. My son in law is fascinated with ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. Both the book and film. The girl, Scout, has a cigar box of little collectives. At the start of the film it shows the contents. I spent a year gathering all the inclusions as close to the original as I could. Even the cigar box I bought was the same one as the film. I gave it to my son in law as a Christmas gift. In the film she takes out more than is seen in the still shots on the internet. I need to rewatch the opening for the full list again. Great read again Shep. Cheers.

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      1. Cheers. Took a very long time searching for the inclusions. I made the two wooden carved figures of Scout and her brother with self hardening clay and painted them to look like wood. Some things I couldn’t get or were just too expensive. Like the Spelling Bee. Just YouTube visited the opening titles scene again. Noticed I’d missed a writing dip nib. I have hundreds now! I can find one out the bundle exactly the same. Yesterday, I Googled the film’s ‘cigar box images’ and the photograph of the one I made up came up as 3rd image. Had to laugh. Cheers Shep. Thought you might be interested.

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      3. I know! Yes. Did get the pennies. Even the dates were exact. Looking for them I found out a bit of information. It was that one of the coins in the film was dated later than the date period of the film’s time period story. One of those film goofs. I’m going to reblog one of the two blogs I put up about this Mockingbird project. It got me thinking of our own seeking for little treasures. Your own collection for example. Amazing. I love people who have a keenness for collecting certain objects. Shows they have passion. Boo Radley though! Who would have thought he would go on to become a Mafia Consigliere.

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      4. Freud said collecting was a result of problems with toilet training. Mum said I did scoot around on the potty. Not sure 5ft was a problem or a bit of fun. What about those who collect barbed wire? I had to look up the ghost’s relevance. He did well.

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      5. That was a poem you just wrote there. Potty training and how it is achieved is pretty strong in psychological analysis. As a nurse it was a weird situation of watching older patients revert back to the beginnings of their life ‘elimination’ scenarios. If you know what I mean. I’d be chasing you around the ward if you were an older patient! Retirement is bliss! I knew someone autistic who collected rusty nails and put them out on display, in OCD fashion, on a huge piece of painted plywood. Move one of the hundreds on there? He’d know in an instant. Like the guy in the Australian desert who could look at the night sky when standing there looking and analysing and spot a star missing amongst the millions on show. I suppose people collect imagery too. Oh! Love how Boo Radley turns out in the Mockingbird film. Not so much with his new found profession though. Cheers and all the best.

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