A black American instrumental group that uses a scraped idiophone in the form of a domestic washboard or ‘rub-board’ as a rhythm instrument. The board is played by drawing a nail, fork or thimbles over the corrugations to produce a loud, staccato rhythm. Cowbells, woodblocks and improvised metallophones were often attached to add tonal variety. Some washboard players placed two boards back-to-back and sat astride them while playing with both hands. Early washboard bands also included string instruments and were frequently augmented by other improvised instruments such as a washtub bass (probably derived from the African ground bow), comb-and-paper or kazoo as well as a harmonica. They are closely related to the children's ‘spasm bands’ of New Orleans; the one led by Stalebread Lacoume in 1897 was the best documented but it may not have included a washboard player. Typical performances by folk washboard bands are Diamond Ring (1930, Gen.) by Walter Taylor and the Washboard Trio, and Chasey Collins's Atlanta Town (1935, Bb).
Washboards were frequently used to accompany blues vocalists, and at least one singer, Washboard Sam (Robert Brown), played a washboard while taking vocal parts, as on his Rack 'em Back (1938, Bb) or Levee Camp Blues (1941, Bb). Almost alone among folk instruments the washboard was sometimes used by jazz bands, examples being Floyd Casey's crisp and forceful rhythms on numerous recordings by Clarence Williams, including Beer Garden Blues (1933, Voc.), and Jimmy Bertrand's driving accompaniments to Louis Armstrong with Erskine Tate's large Vendome Orchestra on Stomp Off, Let's Go (1926, Voc.). In the early 1930s the related groups of the Washboard Rhythm Kings and Washboard Serenaders recorded extensively, often with two trumpets and three reed instruments. In the 1950s the washboard was the favoured instrument of the ‘skiffle bands’, but its novelty soon declined and the instrument returned to the folk idiom of blues. In the postwar years zydeco bands frequently used washboards. The most recent development has been the wearing of a corrugated metal vest, played with thimbles. Cleveland Chenier was the most notable exponent of this technique, as on Zydeco et pas sale (1965, Arhoolie) by his brother, the accordion player Clifton Chenier.
H. Courlander: Negro Folk Music, U.S.A. (London, 1966), 207, 219
P. Oliver: ‘Jug and Washboard Bands’, Jazz on Record, ed. A. McCarthy (London, 1968), 332–4
T. Zwicky: ‘I'm Gonna Beat me some Washboard: the Washboard Rhythm Kings and Affiliated Groups 1930–35’, Storyville, no.19 (1968), 3–8; no.20 (1968–9), 47–51; no.22 (1969), 148–54
D. Evans: ‘Afro-American One-Stringed Instruments’, Western Folklore, xxix (1970), 229–45
J. Broven: The Music of the Cajun Bayous (Baton Rouge, LA, 1983)
PAUL OLIVER