WHAT KIND OF FLUTE IS THAT???
I can't count how many times I've been asked this question in all the years I've been playing the Melody Flute! So what's the story? Well, that's the purpose of this blog post...
My introduction to the Melody Flute was in 1971, while attending college in Montreal. I was in a bright little pop-folk trio which played a few gigs around the campus and downtown Montreal. John Ostrander, the guitarist, was also from the States, and had this unusual flute he had found in a pawn shop in New Jersey. I kept picking it up and blowing it every chance I got until finally John, realizing that my fascination with it far exceeded his own, bequeathed it to me.The rest, as they say, is history...or at least my history.
There is more to the story but this is a blog, not a book, yes? Suffice to say that I"ve been playing the Melody Flute for decades by now, and I do own a collection of them. Turns out they don't all sound the same. The reason is that the materials used to make them changed over the thirty-something year period in which they were made in Laurel, Maryland. The best ones, with the truest pitch and resonance, were made in the late 1930's through the early 1950's. The construction during that time was of brass, with a polished nickel plate coating. Pictured below is an early ad for the Melody Flute which appeared in the May 1939 issue of Boy's Life magazine. Yours at that time for a whopping $0.50!!!
So there you have it, or most of it anyway! While I now play a number of instruments and am a heavy user of technology in the service of music both onstage and in the studio, the instrument I am probably best known for is a pretty humble piece of metal with a mouthpiece and six holes. I've been taking the Melody Flute seriously for over four decades now, and it's still the instrument that best connects me to my soul, and me to those that listen to my music. And playing it still feels like it did in the photo below, taken around 1977 by Bruce Blanchard...probably the first photo ever taken of me playing the Melody Flute.
