photo: Courtesy of Kazoobie Kazoo Factory and Museum
National Kazoo Day, on January 28, celebrates the Southern-born instrument that has proven it’s much more than a plastic party favor. Jimi Hendrix played a homemade kazoo when he recorded “Crosstown Traffic” in 1967. During the ’70s, marketers for The Partridge Family released a kazoo emblazoned with the stars’ picture. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are kazoo fans who incorporated the tiny wind instrument into 1996’s “Love Rollercoaster.” And today, Minecraft players hear the high-pitched sounds of kazoos all the time many of the video game’s animals emit kazoo noises.
Credit the kazoo’s enduring presence in pop culture (not to mention its ear-piercing cameos at kid birthday parties everywhere) to two enterprising residents of Macon, Georgia. According to legend, a formerly enslaved Black man named Alabama Vest designed the kazoo in 1840, modeling it after a West African instrument in which a hollowed-out gourd wa