Who Plays The Kazoo On Jimi Hendrix’s 1968 Classic ‘crosstown Traffic’?

The foundation of what would become the third and final album from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1968’s Electric Ladyland, was laid in London, but it would be completed at the famed Record Plant Studios in Midtown Manhattan, New York.

Even more intriguing, Electric Ladyland would be the studio’s first project; housing one of the music industry’s first 12-track recorders, then considered unusual, the space was a revelation for recording. At the helm was Gary Kellgren, a recording engineer known for his work across multiple studios in New York: he’d worked on The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’ and had a history with Frank Zappa.

Kellgren opened the Record Plant with Chris Stone, the more business-oriented of the two, and they agreed to build their space with an emphasis on comfort and creativity. It would be the perfect place for Hendrix and co to call their second home, for a moment. From the album’s beginnings at London’s Olympic and Mayfair studios, however, Hendrix’s perfectionism rarely waned.

This tendency had spanned from the earliest moments in his career and, on Electric Ladyland, was translated through multiple, agonising takes and a constant criticism of his own voice. He had himself and drummer Mitch Mitchell record ‘Gypsy Eyes’ over the course of over 50 takes, while he tasked himself with singing lead and backing vocals on the title track and ‘Long Hot Summer Night.’ Such precision got to his manager and producer, Chas Chandler, who grew increasingly frustrated.

Surely, it did not help that when Hendrix was not overthinking the minute details of their recording sessions, he turned a given studio space into a gathering of his friends and various guests. Tensions, then, could quickly dissolve into chaos. “There were tons of people in the studio; you couldn’t move,” bassist Noel Redding once recalled. “It was a party, not a session”. Things came to a peak when Chandler ended his professional relationship with Hendrix as a result.

‘Crosstown Traffic’ was not a song intended to be a central point on the record, but when it was chosen as the final single, the song took on a life of its own. “You have the whole planned-out LP, and all of a sudden, they’ll make ‘Crosstown Traffic,’ for instance, a single, and that’s coming out of a whole other set,” Hendrix once bemoaned.

Despite his own irritation with how the song was handled, it remains one of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s most compelling moments on record. Its lyrics dissect his frustrations with his partner, comparing her moods to the stop-and-go nature of a traffic jam. “But darling, can’t you see my signals turn from green to red?” he sings.

One of ‘Crosstown Traffic’s pillars is the kazoo riff, mimicking the chaotic hum of congested traffic as it merges with his electric guitar. The kazoo was, in fact, played by Hendrix himself, but the instrument was not a proper one: rather than find a traditional kazoo to play, he instead made one of his own, fashioned out of a comb and a piece of cellophane. In the album’s liner notes, he is self-credited for playing “comb and paper”.

“Comb and paper” was a more frequently used makeshift instrument than one may think: The Beatles utilised it on their song ‘Lovely Rita’, played by both Paul McCartney and John Lennon, a year before ‘Crosstown Traffic’ was released, while Graham Nash later used comb and paper on his 1971 song ‘Sleep Song.’ One of its earliest uses dates back to the 1920s, with Red McKenzie playing the ‘instrument’ in the jazz band Mound City Blue Blowers. 

The kazoo riff takes a keen ear to parse from Hendrix’s guitar, yet it is essential for rounding out the psychedelic funk stylings that define ‘Crosstown Traffic’, making it a classic in itself.