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Double Bass It was bound to happen...

J

Jeremy Darrow

Apr 6, 2007
778
550
Nashville, TN
Disclosures
Endorsing Artist: Fishman Transducers, Aguilar Amplifiers, Ear Trumpet Labs
#1
About five minutes ago, I was playing my bass while my kids were in another room, playing. My twenty month old daughter came into my office, with a small book in her hand. The next thing I know, that little book was disappearing into my F-hole. She smiled at me, ran out of the room and came back with another, much bigger, book. Good times!
 
#5
At least you have a daughter! My daughters are great. 2 and 5 years at the moment. so far they haven't damaged anything, and the bass sits in a corner of the living room! A little two year old boy comes over, however, and all bets are off. He especially loves to push in the centers of the speaker cones. My hand built desktops still sound ok, I guess, but they look like hell.
 
#7
It's a lot cuter when it's kids. I may or may not have been part of a bored bass section that tried to get pencils into each other's basses when someone was day dreaming in a rehearsal. The turn-it-upside-down-and-shake method is a whole lot easier with a guitar that has a much bigger hole in it, or a cello that isn't so heavy.
 
#8
I heard this story first-hand from Harry Sturm, a member of the old 1940s -50s NBC radio orchestra in Chicago:

The bassist in the orch. (Johnny Frigo, maybe?) kept his bass at the studio, and he was apparently a bit of a hypochondriac. As a practical joke, each day before the bassist arrived, someone (probably Harry) would dump a cup of sand into the bass's f-hole, making it progressively heavier as the weeks went on.

Then, they would play mercilessly on the guy's hypochondria. "Gosh, you're really struggling with that bass today. Just a week ago, you had no problem carrying it." "Maybe you should rest a little bit. Have you considered seeing a doctor?" The guy was finally convinced that he was at death's door when they let him in on the joke.

Cruel, maybe, but you gotta admit, it takes a lot of patience and dedication to carry a joke through like that.
 
#11
robobass said:
At least you have a daughter! My daughters are great. 2 and 5 years at the moment. so far they haven't damaged anything, and the bass sits in a corner of the living room! A little two year old boy comes over, however, and all bets are off. He especially loves to push in the centers of the speaker cones. My hand built desktops still sound ok, I guess, but they look like hell.
Click to expand...

Little boys break stuff. Every time the little guys next door come to play, they break something. Usually within ten minutes.
 
#12
Mike Goodbar said:
I heard this story first-hand from Harry Sturm, a member of the old 1940s -50s NBC radio orchestra in Chicago:

The bassist in the orch. (Johnny Frigo, maybe?) kept his bass at the studio, and he was apparently a bit of a hypochondriac. As a practical joke, each day before the bassist arrived, someone (probably Harry) would dump a cup of sand into the bass's f-hole, making it progressively heavier as the weeks went on.

Then, they would play mercilessly on the guy's hypochondria. "Gosh, you're really struggling with that bass today. Just a week ago, you had no problem carrying it." "Maybe you should rest a little bit. Have you considered seeing a doctor?" The guy was finally convinced that he was at death's door when they let him in on the joke.

Cruel, maybe, but you gotta admit, it takes a lot of patience and dedication to carry a joke through like that.
Click to expand...
I've heard this story before, but the version I was told involved Stuart Sankey and his students at Aspen in the 60's.
 

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