What was the “Cool” instrument to play?
Sax maybe?
Though I’m sure Souzaphone has and will always draw be a lady-magnet. That and accordion.
The saxophone was for posers (well, except for John Coltrane) and goofy college kids who tried to be cool. The really cool instrument was the trumpet.
If you go back far enough, ukuleles were popular.
What he said. If we are discussing just prior to rock n’ roll then yes, ukes and banjos were more popular. Roy Smeck - the Wizard of the Strings and the most popular vaudeville stringed-instrument player - favored the uke, and it was a big instrument in the Jazz age, and there was also a big Hawaiian Music fad back then - oh, and Arthur Godfrey was one of THE top radio personalities back in the day and a uke player. Banjo - 4-string Dixieland, not 5-string clawhammer - was a loud rhythm instrument used in combos to cut through the sound. Count Basie’s infamous Mr. Rhythm, Freddie Green, played banjo (not with Basie, but learning as a rhythm player) before switching to the new, huge-bodied arch-top guitars that emerged in the 20’s and 30’s to project loud rhythm tones…
In terms of pure cock-of-the-walk struttiness though, nothing compares to the guitar like the violin. Just read up on our boy Niccolo Paganini - dressed in black, playing a legendary, named instrument (The Cannon), was rumored to have amazing powers (could touch is pinky and thumb over the back of his hand!!) and was basically held up to be the shred-tastic technique master of all time. Shred guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen explicitly models his technique and image on Paganini - no doubt our boy Niccolo is spinning in his grave…
Going back to the Romantic era in the mid-19th C., Franz Liszt was an uncommonly popular pianist and arguably the modern world’s first “rock star,” more than a century before the invention of rock music. The term “Lisztomania” was coined in 1844 to express the fervid hysteria that became associated with his female followers; this phenomenon inspired a Ken Russell film and a certain hit song by Phoenix.
Incidentally, if you’re interested in this millieu or are simply looking for a great movie to check out, I recommend the 1991 farce Impromptu, which is centered on the relationship-in-the-making between the female writer George Sand (Judy Davis) and Frederyk Chopin (Hugh Grant), with a cast of characters including Franz Liszt (Julian Sands), Liszt’s mistress (Bernadette Peters), painter Eugene Delacroix (Ralph Brown), Sand’s ex-lover and poet Alfred DeMusset (Mandy Patinkin), Sand’s on-again, off-again lover (and tutor to her children) Mallefille (George Correface), and Sand’s mother (Anna Massey). Lisztomania per se isn’t depicted, but Liszt is a major secondary character and it’s clear that he’s a leading entertainer and massively popular.