Rolf Harris Wobble Board Views

Sports & Outdoors

Born in Perth, Western Australia, Harris was a champion swimmer before studying art. He moved to England in 1952, where he started to appear on television programmes on which he drew the characters. He also began a musical career initially with the piano accordion. He wrote the famous song Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport , and when performing in Canada he introduced his popular routine Jake the Peg. He often uses unusual instruments in his performances: he plays the didgeridoo, has been credited with the invention of the wobble board, a rhythmic percussion instrument, and was associated with the Stylophone, a small electronic keyboard instrument.

Harris has been credited with inventing a simple homemade instrument called the wobble board. This discovery was accidentally made in the course of his work when he attempted to dry a freshly painted hardboard with added heat, from hearing the sound made by the board as he shook it by the short edges to cool it off. He suggests the effect can best be obtained through faint bouncing of a tempered hardboard or a thinner MDF board between the palms of one's hands.

In 1960 he worked on TVW-7's first locally produced show Spotlight. During his time at TVW he recorded his hit Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. The song was recorded on a single microphone placed above him in the television studio. The song was sent to record company EMI in Sydney and it was soon released as a record. Harris offered four unknown backing musicians 10% of the royalties for the song, but they decided to take a recording fee of ₤7 each because they thought the song would be a flop.[2] The novelty song was originally titled Kangalypso and featured the distinctive sound of the wobble board , which was played by bouncing it up and down.

Harris also recorded a version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody around this time. He performed The Divinyls' I Touch Myself — accompanied only by his wobble board — for Andrew Denton's Musical Challenge on the MMM Breakfast Show (the recording was released on the first Musical Challenge compilation album in 2000). Later that year he made his first appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in what was seen as a novelty act. He played there again in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2009 and 2010.