Artist
ACTIVE:1920
- 1922
Sam Moore, a Floridian who moved north to play in the Ziegfeld Follies
in New York in 1920-21, was the type of guy who liked to make music out
of whatever was at hand. Moore's dad told the papers that when Sam was
a small boy, he'd seen him "get music out of a pitchfork." It was only
a small step from a pitchfork to a saw, and Moore championed the
musical possibilities of the household carpentry implement for several
years, learning to bow the instrument to produce a warbling, lonesome
sound.
Horace Davis, meanwhile, was another child of the
South who showed
up in vaudeville. He was the great-grandson of Robert E. Lee and a
guitar player of some talent. Like Moore, he had a yen for unusual
instruments, and he became adept at playing something called an
"octo-chorda," an eight-stringed steel-string guitar sometimes referred
to as a "harp guitar." Once Davis with his octo-chord guitar found
Moore with his saw, a my-chocolate-in-your-peanut-butter moment was
sure to ensue.
The team toured vaudeville and were a big hit. On record in 1921,
they scored with "Mother Macree," another sentimental Irish tune, and
they recorded a bunch more tunes for Victor, Columbia, and Gennett,
including this one. On this record, Moore's saw playing is so smooth
that it often sounds like he's playing a theremin, the electronic "no
hands" instrument developed around the same time. It's a masterful
performance, a little silly and a little forlorn, as the end of summer
should be. Davis lays back and strums on this one, giving Moore room
(on other records, like their famous "Laughing Rag," Davis could go
toe-to-toe with Moore).
Sadly, the singing saw would soon decline in popularity, and for
awhile, Sam Moore moved onto balloons, making music with spoon-player
Carl Freed under the banner "Spooning and Ballooning." Apparently,
Moore took rubber balloon music just as seriously as he took saw music,
although sadly no records appear to have been made of this act. Moore
later moved on to a career in radio. Not much is known about what
happened to Horace Davis; one assumes that he traded his harp-guitar
for a angel's harp some years ago.
There are no known CD collections of the work of Sam
Moore and Horace Davis, but maybe one of these days the singing saw
will make a major comeback and the pioneering work of Sam Moore will be
recognized. For now, we'll just have to settle for bidding adieu to
summer with the sweet and nostalgic strains of Sam Moore's saw in the
background.-Joe McGasko's Free Music Archive blog post, which can be read in full here
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