The dolceola, and a credit that stuck for 70 years
The dolceola is a small zither with a keyboard bolted on, made by the Toledo Symphony Company between about 1903 and 1908. Fewer than fifty are thought to survive. It’s a strange, lovely thing that sounds like a piano and an autoharp having a disagreement.
For a long time it was famous for one reason. It was supposedly the instrument on Washington Phillips’ gospel sides for Columbia, cut between 1927 and 1929. Those records are gorgeous, and nearly every reissue repeated the dolceola credit.
Then in 2002 Michael Corcoran, writing for the Austin American-Statesman, started pulling at the thread, and instrument collector Gregg Miner kept going. Their conclusion: Phillips played fretless zithers he built himself, not a factory dolceola. If you want to hear the real thing on record, Paul Howard plays one on Lead Belly’s 1944 Capitol sessions, and Ry Cooder used one in the ’70s.
We like this story because it’s a good reminder. Gear credits get copied from liner note to liner note and article to article. Where we can, we link the source so you can check our work too.
Watch and read
- Gregg Miner: Michael Corcoran on Washington Phillips
- Gregg Miner: The Washington Phillips study
- Wikipedia: Dolceola
