Another fine evening with the Local On-Call Orchestra last night playing Old Time for contra dancers. Five fiddles (two melody, our chord viola, and me and another beginner on harmony), two mandolins, a banjo, a guitar and a stand-up bass (also called bull fiddle).
“Well, I won’t have any doubt about the rhythm,” I told the bass player who was standing beside my chair. He smiled. Said he was six weeks into learning the instrument. ‘Course he also reads music and plays piano and electric bass guitar. So why the bull fiddle, I asked.
Said he’d always been interested in it and then a friend wrote a song in which one line went “Ninety percent of playing the bass is owning one.” So he bought one and started playing it.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 