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THE MUSICAL SAW: WHY AND HOW to play it
A few years ago, in an interview with an admiring reporter from the Dodge City Musical Saw Weekly, Marshal McDillon explained how and why he plays the musical saw.
“So you’ve been riding the trail all day, and you finally set up camp and take care of the horses and eat some beans and roast some squirrels. And later on, everybody’s sitting around, poking at the fire with willow switches, and somebody pulls out a mouth organ. Or, if nobody has one, then mouth organ music just comes out of thin air and everybody looks at each other, puzzled-like. It’s a cliche of every Classic Western, the mouth organ music coming out of thin air around the campfire. You’re supposed to act like you don’t even hear that mouth organ music.
“Anyhow, when this happens, I just head on over to the chuck wagon and find a hand saw and a fiddle bow.
“I sit down on a log and clamp the handle of the saw between my knees so that the saw points straight up and the teeth face towards me.
“Next, I grab the top of the saw with my left hand and bend it to my left into a ‘C’ shape, then slightly back at the top so that it makes a slight ‘S’ shape.
“Then I pick up the bow with my right hand and let ‘er rip. When I bow the bent saw, it makes a howling sound. Like a coyote. Or a theremin. No discrete pitches like you get with a piano.
“It’s hard to play it good enough so that it doesn’t sound like a heartbreakingly lonesome wild animal.
“But I’d recommend to everybody that, before you try this out on the trail, you may wish to practice in the privacy of a dark windowless cellar. Give yourself some time to get the hang of it. Say, four or five years.”