Bazooka (instrument)

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The bazooka is a rare, novelty brasswind musical instrument which is several feet in length and incorporates telescopic tubing like the trombone. Often, bazookas are very simply constructed with scavenged materials like pipes and funnels. From its start within a lipreed mouthpiece which may be handmade or borrowed from another low brass instrument, the air column rapidly expands into a wider length of pipe which slides freely around a narrower length of pipe which itself terminates in a widely flaring bell.

Although the slide action of the bazooka appears to exist for the purpose of altering pitch, this is never the case due to the extremely wide diameter of the tubing employed in the body of the horn. As overall instrument length is changed by the player, only the tone quality of the sound is changed as a range of subtle harmonic overtones are made more or less audible. This effect gives the bazooka its characteristic warbling, echoing sound which comically and constantly reminds listeners that the horn is derived from junk materials.

In reality, all notes emitted from the bazooka are produced purely in falset. In other words, pitches are produced specifically by the players lips as they vibrate and resonate in conjunction with the mouthpiece and leadpipe unit but not with the full tube length of the horn as is the case in the trombone. Unlike the trombone, the remainder of the bazooka works mainly as a megaphone to amplify the volume of the sound.

The bazooka was popularized in the 1930s by radio comedian Bob Burns, who is credited with inventing the instrument some 20 years earlier. The bazooka was also played by jazz musicians Noon Johnson and Sanford Kendrick.

During World War II, the name "bazooka" which derived from this musical instrument was applied to a new anti-tank weapon.

The bazooka has sometimes been confused with a different novelty instrument, the kazoo; kazoos have sometimes been referred to as "bazookas", especially in British English.