On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 07:02:48 GMT, "Paul Stamler"
wrote:

On the fourth hand, a lot of musicologists trace slide-style playing back to
African stringed instruments and their playing styles. A lot of
African-American blues players got their start playing a "diddley-bow", a
single string (often a piece of fence wire) nailed to the side of a building
with two pieces of sharp-edged wood wedged in as bridges, played with
something that served as a slide, be it a knife-blade, a bottle neck, a
medicine bottle or a deep socket from Sears. It was also called a
"bow-diddley", and now you know where *his* name came from. Confusingly, a
"bow-diddley" sometimes also referred to a mouth-bow.


This is the real origin of blues bottleneck style... the Hawaiian
craze was a separate thing.

Al