Aside from this coricidin bottle guitar slide’s characteristically light weight, I was wondering if you all could clue me in to the significance of such a bottle’s usage as a guitar slide, i.e., why coricidin?
Probably because Duane Allman used a Coricidin bottle as a slide. Have a look here.
I don’t know about the particular brand, but I thought the ubiquity of the medicine bottle arose from there being so many after the war and its convenient shape. Before the glass slide I believe players used a knife, often along a single string nailed to a piece of wood. I could be making this up. I hope I’m not.
“Because Duane did it” is probably the ultimate answer.
You’re not crazy, audiobottle. Some of the original blues guys definitely used knives. Bottles of all sorts are still popular. I think Roy Buchanan used a beer bottle - or at least he could. And let’s not forget Lowell George, who used a socket wrench.
As far as Duane goes, I guess he probably tried a Coricidin D bottle just because there was one laying around after he finished some cold medicine. I do know that the bottles are short compared to some other slides, which should play into the light-weight thing. On some guitars they won’t go over all six strings, although not too many people will play slide on the lowest strings. The original bottles also had a nice, thin opening, which kept them from moving around on your finger too much. If my memory plus this link are right, that was the pre-childproof cap version. My father has several Coricidin bottle slides. The ‘spare’ he gave me has a wider mouth, which is a little less convenient for my skinny fingers. That one is childproof. It’s actually sitting right next to my computer and looks identical to the one in your link, Joe K.
Heh. I tried a knife once, and it sounded awful. I don’t know if it was too sharp, or if my technique was wrong, but the dragging sound over the wound strings sounded horrible. Beer bottles work, but they’re pretty hard to control and I’d be mighty impressed if you could do it with just one finger. I always used to have this idea of getting little finger caps so I could play slide with four fingers (maybe even my thumb?), but I never actually acted on the idea to see if it was feasible or not.
Corcidin bottles work nicely on electric slide because they’re lighter and go well with the lower action – heavier slides are more likely to bump against the frets. They’re also compatible because of the greater sustain of electric guitars compared with acoustics – the shorter sustain from lighter-weight slides isn’t a liability. But I agree that Duane’s use of them helped to popularize them.
Slide guitar was first played with the guitar laid down in the lap, originated in Hawaii in the late 1800’s, and is thought to have migrated to the Mississippi Delta sometime around the turn of the century. Hawaiian pickers used all kinds of things – railroad spikes, automobile wrist pins, etc. Knives were commonly available. Hawaiian music swept the nation in the early 20th century, and manufacturers started making solid steel bars specifically for playing slide.
The first mention of a blues guitarist playing slide was from W.C. Handy’s autobiography – he says it was in 1902, and the guy played lap-style with a knife. Many early blues players alternated between lap and upright. A lot of them used glass bottlenecks, others would use a piece of brass piping (Booker White, Son House, Charley Patton). Booker White also sometimes used a skinny steel rod, like a socket extender, for lap-style play. Mance Lipscomb, a Texas bluesman born in 1895, played upright with a knife, holding the back of the blade against the strings from under the neck. John Hammond, Jr., a modern-day blues preservationist, is another who plays slide with a socket.
You name it, someone’s tried it. Which is one of my favorite things about guitar – there are lots more ways to make it sound good than with, say, the violin or piano.
There are slight differences in sound from slide to slide. The hard materials have a slightly brighter sound, and the softer stuff, such as brass and bone, sound a little warmer and deaden the sound a wee bit. Ry Cooder uses a glass bottleneck from a whiskey bottle, and he claims the sound is different on the seam side from the smooth side.
These claims are all from guitarists. I assure you that my ears have never been able to tell any difference.