Help me identify and hear a musical instrument I saw on TV about 20 years ago.

May 24, 2007 8:38 AM

Singer Linda Ronstadt appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson years ago (20 or more?). She sang a song that was accompanied by a strange looking instrument. My faulty memory bank says it looked like a ceramic pot turning on a horizontal rotisserie! Can you help me identify it...show me a picture...let me hear it?
posted by rdauphin to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

A Hurdy Gurdy?
posted by bondcliff at 8:42 AM on May 24, 2007

Best answer: Could it have been a glass harmonica?
posted by kdern at 8:43 AM on May 24, 2007

Best answer: Could it have been related to a glass harmonica? (An instrument also called the "glass armonica" made up of glass cups that rotate on a central spindle and work the same way as you rubbing your finger around the rim of a glass.)

[I didn't see the show, could be way off-base]
posted by rmless at 8:45 AM on May 24, 2007

Best answer: It must have been a glass harmonica... she released a whole album using the instrument.

posted by kdern at 8:46 AM on May 24, 2007

Response by poster: Yes, I'm sure that's it. Thanks so much for quick and accurate response. I'm thrilled to find this info... the hive ROCKS!
posted by rdauphin at 8:53 AM on May 24, 2007

I wonder if it might have been a berimbau? That was my first guess from your description of the instrument. Maybe one of the songs from Frenesi - released in 1992
posted by rongorongo at 8:54 AM on May 24, 2007

Invented by your friend and mine, Benjamin Franklin. Let's have a nice round of applause for Ben.
posted by fidelity at 9:06 AM on May 24, 2007

Doncha just love AskMeFi?
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:50 AM on May 24, 2007

aren't all rotisseries horizontal? has anybody here ever seen a vertical rotisserie?
posted by bruce at 1:50 AM on May 25, 2007

has anybody here ever seen a vertical rotisserie?

Certainly. On my in-laws' countertop, also.
posted by cairnish at 2:00 PM on May 25, 2007