The Double Bass

[Futwick]

The sound of jazz is the sound of the double bass. While jazzy rock and fusion have opted for bass guitars, most of jazz has remained loyal to the double bass. It’s what gives jazz its distinctive sound. Certainly vintage jazz is typified and captured in the double bass whether we are talking Dixieland, 20s jazz, swing, bop, cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, avant-jazz or what have you.

Some might think that the earliest jazz bands and ensembles used tubas but the photographic evidence suggests otherwise. Double basses seem to have always been used. This presents us with an interesting insight into the formation of jazz: rather than descending from the horn ensemble or the string band, jazz descended from both in that there really was no jazz until the two traditions came together. Both horn and string bands played ragtime in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but only when both combined was the type of expression and musical vocabulary necessary for jazz available.

The Robichaux Orchestra of New Orleans was a proto-jazz band, a ragtime band on the verge of playing jazz. This photo is from 1896 or so. Some sources say it is from 1886 but that is highly unlikely as some of these men are seen in later photographs in the aughts and tens of the 20th century playing in true jazz bands but don’t look particularly older. One of these men is bassist Oak Gaspard. The fact that he would go on to play true jazz would indicate that what the Robichaux Orchestra played must not have been far from it.

The first true jazz band is said to be the Buddy Bolden band. This photo was taken circa 1903. Bolden is holding the cornet. He was originally a blues player but he and trombonist Willie Cornish (standing next to Bolden) wanted to form a ragtime band. Cornish could read music but Bolden could not. Cornish tried to teach Bolden to play ragtime but Bolden was unable to rid himself of his blues roots and ended up with a unique hybrid of both styles that the band built itself around and jazz was born. Bolden was said to play so powerfully that he could be heard blowing from four miles away on a good night and often literally blew his cornets to pieces onstage. He was considered the greatest horn man of them all and so was often called King Bolden. This is the only known photo of him. The band also had a drummer but he was missed the shoot. Once again, we see a double bass instead of a tuba. The bassist, Jimmy Johnson, would go on to play in other jazz bands. Bolden appeared to have lost his mind in 1907 and was sent to an asylum where he spent the next 24 years, dying there in 1931. He never recorded.

Another progenitor of jazz was trombonist Kid Ory of LaPlace, LA. He formed a ragtime band who all played homemade instruments. Ory made his own banjo, Stonewall Matthews made his own fiddle. The drummer actually played an inverted chair tapping the bottom and legs alternately. They were called Ory’s Woodland Band. They busked in the streets and threw their own picnics where all the attendees paid a small fee to dance, eat salad and sandwiches, some people brought their own beer and booze and the band would play all day long while everyone had a ball. They were so good that they soon had enough money to start buying real instruments. Since Ory was the bandleader, he got first dibs. Ory saw a trombone in a pawnshop and wanted it. He was able to buy it for $7.50 while the other band members had to wait a while but eventually all of them got real instruments. The bassist in the photo (taken circa 1905) is Foster Lewis. Notice again, instead getting a tuba man, they got a double bass. What’s interesting is that Lewis is holding a bow rather than playing with his fingers. Jazz bass was bowed most of the time in these early days of jazz (when it was spelled “jass”). Who started playing pizzicato and when is not really known. When Ory turned 21, he and his band lit out for New Orleans to crack the big time. All of them would go on to establish careers in jazz music. Ory is responsible for giving us Louis Armstrong. Louis was a kid who loved Ory’s band which contained the cornet phenom Joe “King” Oliver. Louis played blues but not jazz but Ory recognized his talent and put him under King’s wing and they quickly became like father and son. King Oliver taught Louis everything he knew about jazz. Needless to say, they were lessons well learned.

 

[Futwick]

King Oliver's band featuring Bill Johnson on bass. Johnson is often credited as the man who began playing jazz bass pizzicato. While I don't doubt that he was one of the first, I think the transition was one whose time had come and probably several bassists made the switch at the same time independently of each other. King Oliver is Louis Armstrong's mentor and, sure enough, Louis is seated in the center with Johnson's hand on his shoulder.

Some think the double bass is a hybrid of the bass viol and a violin. It does have similarities to both but the double bass is a violin—period. Like viols, double basses are tuned in 4ths (EADG) while the violin is GDAE (tuned in 5ths) but that’s because the double bass would be so hard to finger tuned in 5ths (they were tuned in 5ths at one time but it was impractical). Cellos are also tuned in 4ths: ADGC. Many double basses are flatbacked like viols. But the similarities stop there. Viols have six strings while the violin family has four. Viols are fretted while violins are not. In internal construction, the double bass is identical to the other violins while the bass viol is very different. Double basses are made to project low frequencies very loudly in large halls while the bass viol interior is actually lined with linen to muffle it for chamber playing. While many double basses are flatbacked, many have curved backs like other violins. Mine, in fact, has a curved back. The bass viol has no end-pin to stand on or a very short one. Double basses and cellos have very lengthy end-pins. This matters because the viol is actually descended, believe it or not, from a guitar while the violin family is not and guitars don’t have end-pins other than a little stub for the strap and that’s a recent development in guitar evolution. The viol came from the Spanish vihuela, a guitar that some began to bow on but it was hard because the strings were in line and nearly impossible to play isolated so they were raised and separated like on a violin.

There is a gap in the violin family. The violin and viola overlap in range. The cello and viola overlap in range but the double bass and cello do not overlap very well. Attempts have been made over years to create a kind of bass/cello but none have been widely accepted.

 

[Futwick]

Basses come in various sizes. The earliest basses were huge, cumbersome things to carry around (not that today’s basses are any less a chore). The strings were made of gut (various animal intestines provided the collagen from which gut strings are made) but were very thick strings that had to be taut to have any volume. Consequently, the strings could only be played with the first finger and then the other three in unison. It required great strength and stamina to play one and bassists in orchestras back in those days were young, strong men because the instruments wore out older men quickly. It was a common sight in those days to see men in the bass section collapse in their seats breathing heavily in the middle of a piece while the other bassist kept on playing. Once they caught their breath, they would stand up and start bowing again. The other problem with the thick guts was that they had a tendency to twist while being bowed which reduced the volume considerably. Eventually, someone invented wound gut strings which reduced the thickness and the twisting tendency ceased. Basses could also be made smaller for the same volume. By the turn of last century, steel wound strings were being used. Today, gut and steel strings are the norm for basses. I use steels but other bassists swear by guts.

One reason the bass string technology improved was because of a man named Domenico Dragonetti. He was an incredible virtuoso who played bass better than anyone else in Europe. In the days before orchestras used conductors, the principle bassist was the timekeeper that all the other instruments aligned themselves to. Dragonetti was easily the best timekeeper in Europe and could keep even the largest, unruly orchestras playing in unison. He had huge, powerful hands and fingers and could play on the thick gut strings using his fingers individually instead of in unison. He could also set his string action up far higher than other bassists which gave his sound more power and better intonation. When he played, everyone could hear it. When Beethoven heard Dragonetti play, he was struck by the wonderful possibilities of writing symphonies with complex bass lines. He frequently had to have Dragonetti play in his orchestra because no other bassist could handle the bass lines. This quickly became an unacceptable situation prompting luthiers to design basses capable of handling complex bass lines that most decent bassists could play. They needed better, smaller basses to do what Dragonetti was able to do with the big, unwieldy basses.

One of Dragonetti’s basses still exists and is called “the Giant” which stands a whopping nine feet tall! But bigger basses existed. Some stood 10 or more feet. I know of one that stood 11 feet and another stood 13 feet and one in America in the mid-19th century that stood a whopping 15 feet! One bass, invented in England, was set up in a tavern and a hole had to be cut in the ceiling for it. Its maker proceeded to bow on it and it rumbled so mightily that the beams of the establishment began to shake and dust fell from the furiously pulsing ceiling. The windows rattled and cracked as did the bottles and glasses, the floor shook and tables and chairs turned over. People shouted at the man to stop but he ignored them, bowing furiously. Patrons fled the tavern in panic. The proprietor ran back in and told the man to stop, he was causing the building collapse. The musician kept bowing in a kind of euphoria and shouted, “Let it!” I have no information on how tall this bass was.

Dragonetti's Giant.

 

[Futwick]

One enormous bass, the octobasse, is still in use, stands about 12 feet high. The octobasse was invented in Paris in 1850 by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume (1798-1875). The frets are necessary for precise intonation. The strings are tuned C1 G1 C2. The strings are so thick and the neck so high up that often two people had to play it—one to bow and the other to control the hand and foot stops which constituted the “fingering”. Impossible to finger, the bass had frets operated with levers. The strings passed under rather than over the frets and the fret would clamp down on the string. The player could then bow the string. The bow was usually rather short simply because a longer bow was too awkward to use in the position in which the player had to stand. If a longer bow was required then two people had to play the bass simultaneously. What was the purpose of such a huge, unwieldy bass instrument? To fill a hall with a deep, throbbing bass frequencies that made the air vibrate. Anything from violent thunderstorms to volcanic eruptions to crashing ocean waves could be set to music (especially opera) with this bass. Often the smaller basses played in conjunction with it to produce a single, awesome, powerful bass line. Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Strauss, Brahms and Wagner all wrote pieces that utilized the octobasse to great effect.

Why do these older basses have only 3 strings instead of 4? In the days of these old-type gut strings, the low E couldn't be heard that well. It was thick and twisted when bowed on. So bass-makers did away with it and made a 3-stringer for soloing. This also lessened the string tension put on the belly of the instrument so that it vibrated more freely and that translated directly into better volume and clarity.

Basses are sized today as 4/4, 7/8, 3/4, 5/8, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/10, etc. 4/4 basses are the designation for the first basses—quite large even by today’s standards. Nobody uses them anymore except perhaps some old style orchestras who want to play on period instruments. The 7/8 bass is still used in many orchestras for its volume but still too large for jazz or blues. The standard today is the 3/4 bass which just about everybody uses. My bass is a 3/4 size. People of smaller stature, however, will still find these impractical and so may go for the smaller sizes. Now, a 1/2 bass is not half the size of a 4/4. These are just designations not mathematical relationships. The other reason some bassists opt for smaller size basses is that they can get up and down the neck a lot faster. One reason the 7/8 bass is not used outside of certain orchestral situations is that the neck is too long and wide to play quick runs.

 

[Futwick]

I don't know anything about this band but i love the photo.

Duke's band in 1940. The bassist in Jimmy Blanton. Blanton was a child prodigy on the violin but like many black musicians of great promise, was told to switch over to bass because a black person had no future as a classical musician. Blanton started playing bass when he attended Tennessee State University and played in the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra upon his graduation but then joined up with Ellington. Blanton is considered the savior of the instrument turning it from a mere timekeeper to a soloing instrument in the jazz ensemble. He should be rightfully considered a bop musician who transformed the role of bass except that Blanton didn't play in a bop band. Duke's jazz was its own genre. But without Blanton's work, bop would be a different animal because bop functions on the type of bass lines Blanton invented. Blanton only played for Duke for 2 years and then retired from music due to advanced TB which killed him in 1942 and the ripe old age of 22.

Paul Chambers grew up in Detroit and originally played tuba. He decided to switch over to bass in 1949 and was taught by a bassist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra starting 1952. He played in classical orchestras for several years before trying his hand at jazz. He went to New York and auditioned for Miles Davis who hired him. Chambers played on the immortal "Kind of Blue" album where his intonation, timing and improvisational abilities quickly won his great attention. Many consider "Kind of Blue" to be the greatest improvisational bass-playing ever recorded. Chambers went to play for quite a number of big names in bop. His playing is today considered its own school of instruction and anyone who takes up bass today learns the riffs of Chambers as essential study aids. He was famous for his "ladyhead" bass which was actually grafted onto another bass body. I do not know what has happened to it since Chambers' death in the 60s.

Ron Carter (b. 1937) is from Ferndale, MI which is basically a suburb of Detroit. He was a cellist originally but after his family moved to Detroit around 1947, he started with the bass because his teachers didn’t think a black person had a future as a classical musician. He attended Cass Technical High School then Eastman School of Music where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1959. He then attended Manhattan School of Music in New York where he graduated with a master’s degree in double bass performance in 1961. Carter has gone onto to appear on about 2,500 albums including quite a number of his own. He is probably the most recorded bassist ever. He has played virtually every style of jazz and has also recorded as a cellist. In the 1970s, Carter championed a small bass he called basso piccolo that bridged the gap between double bass and cello. Carter is roundly regarded today as the greatest of the bass-walkers (although I’d certainly place Ray Brown in that same category). His walking bass lines are required study for most novices. I was given a formal education in walking bass via the study of Carter’s lines. They are so imaginative and well thought out and executed, it is difficult to imagine how to improve on them. Even though my main instructor didn’t care for Carter’s solos he still proclaimed his walking lines as unparalleled and considers them mandatory study complete with sheet music, charts and even play-alongs—some of them recorded at half speed so that one can hear every note. My walking abilities are a result of many, many hours of intense study devoted to Ron Carter’s walking lines. I have dissected them note-by-note and even learned them backwards in order get inside the man.

 

[Futwick]

Charles Mingus (1922-1979) was born in Nogales, Arizona to a black-Swedish father and a Chinese-English mother but grew up in Watts in LA. He was the nephew of clarinetist Fess Williams who was bandleader of the Royal Flush Orchestra who were quite popular in the 1920s and 30s. Incredibly, Mingus’s main instrument was not the bass but the cello, which he loved. Well into his career, Mingus still played cello more than bass in his private time which is amazing considering that he was known to practice his bass for as long as 17 hours in a day! In grade school, Mingus was neglected by his music teachers who were white and simply believed no black person could ever be a competent classical musician and so he was not taught to read music the way the white students were which left him embittered. By high school, he switched to bass for the same reason Ron Carter did. He found many of the cello techniques transferred over to bass so the transition was pretty easy for him.

Mingus was later taught by Hermann Reinshagen of the New York Philharmonic who was also the teacher of Fred Zimmerman who is considered the greatest bass pedagogue in the United States. Now able to read music, Mingus also studied composition under Lloyd Reese. Mingus did not like to call himself a jazz musician since he was more influenced by classical composition than by jazz musicians with the exception of Ellington whom he idolized.

Whether Mingus’s early experiences with racism made him irascible or whether he was that way by nature, he acquired a reputation as “the angry man of jazz” and not without good reason. His tantrums and rants were legendary. Early in his career, he got to play with Ellington as his bassist but became embroiled in an ongoing feud with trombonist Juan Tizol. Once, during a show, Tizol had to quickly leave the bandstand and run out to the front of the stage to do a solo but had to run past Mingus. Mingus saw Tizol running towards him and thought Juan was charging at him. Mingus—a huge, powerful man—shoved little Tizol across the floor on his back. The band was stupefied but kept on playing. Tizol just lay on the floor with his trombone looking up at Mingus in total shock. Ellington was furious and canned Mingus that night. Mingus still retained a great admiration for Ellington and had worked with him long enough to pick up pointers for continuing with his own compositions.

Mingus led small ensembles in the early 50s doing the standards. I have some of these rare recordings and they are phenomenal. Mingus uses his bass in these recordings to keep the band in line by force of will. But Mingus was really a composer and began to assemble orchestras for his compositions. In 1959, he released “Mingus Ah Um” which is considered a great work that stood beside anything put out by Miles or Brubeck or Coltrane at that same time. His compositions are combinations of jazz and classical and so qualify as some of the earliest examples of Third Stream. In fact, Mingus released an astonishing 30 records in 10 years! His magnum opus is considered to be “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” recorded and released in 1963, about the time he punched his trombonist, Jimmy Knepper, in the mouth so hard that Knepper permanently lost part of his range while both were working on a composition in Mingus’s apartment. Strangely, he and Knepper began working together again in 1977.

During this time, Mingus continued to fight with, fire and rehire band members and, during live performances, fought with people in the audience. He could not tolerate people talking and clinking their glasses and plates during performances and would often shout at the audiences to knock it off and not in the nicest of choice of language. He often stopped songs while playing live in order to berate musicians who were not playing to his satisfaction—often starting a piece over again 6 or 7 times. He once chased all but two musicians off the stage and played blues for an hour and half with them until he finally felt like calling the others back on. Audiences complained that they felt they were watching a rehearsal rather than a live show. Sometimes the audience would get fed up and heckle Mingus who, in response, once smashed a $20,000 bass onstage and stormed off.

Mingus did suffer from depression and this likely played a role in his temperament. He often had bouts of depression following a creative flourish. In his later years, he suffered from obesity exacerbated by his cigar-smoking. He also had ALS so that by the mid-70s, he was unable to play the bass anymore. He continued to compose and listened to music that helped him cope with his debilitating condition. One artist whose music he enjoyed during this period was Joni Mitchell. He composed some music for her and the two became friends and began collaborating. His final project was, in fact, the Joni Mitchell album “Mingus” which he died before he could finish. He had gone down to the Mexican coast for some relaxation and rehab but died there at the age of 56 on January 5, 1979. That same day, 56 whales beached themselves on the coast of Mexico. “Mingus” is probably the best album that Joni Mitchell ever made but is horribly underrated. Folk snobs ignore it because it’s jazz (featuring artists as Eddie Gomez, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams and John McLaughlin), jazz snobs ignore it because they don’t regard Mitchell as a legit jazz artist (which she’s not but she was collaborating with Mingus, for god’s sake!). Mingus was cremated and his ashes scattered in Ganges River in India as per his instructions (quite the mystic, he always regarded himself as something of a Buddhist). He is considered today to be the successor to Ellington as a jazz composer.

 

[Futwick]

I think the double bass is the most beautiful instrument ever made but then I’m partial to the violin family. It is the only instrument of the violin family that is at home in classical as it is jazz or vice-versa. Although violins, violas and cellos are used in jazz, they are not mainstays by any means but the double bass is firmly at home in jazz. It is the only instrument in the violin family that is played pizzicato more than it is arco and sounds perfectly natural either way. I have heard the cello played pizzicato in jazz (Percy Heath and Ray Brown, for example) but this more a novelty. Slapping a bass produces yet a different sound. You can’t really slap other types of violins.

Maybe you’ve been thinking about learning to play one but don’t know how to get started. First off, it needs to be a commitment and not just some side hobby. It takes time and money to learn the double bass. First off, make sure there’s a decent instructor in your area. Don’t try to learn this instrument on your own. You’ll plateau out in about 2 months and progress no further. There are so many things to learn to be any good on this instrument that you can’t learn them without an instructor. The other reason you need to find instructor BEFORE you do anything else is so that when you look for a bass, you have someone with some knowledge to look it over for you so you don’t waste your money on a piece of crap. This instructor may even have a bass for sale or knows someone who does and can hook you up. He will also have access to a luthier which is essential to your bass-playing ambitions.

How much does a double bass cost? They are not cheap, let me put it that way. Don’t expect to spend less than $2000 and that’s a very cheap model. Good enough for a novice. But wait, you say, I see 4/4 models on the internet for $650! First off, nobody plays 4/4 anymore. Secondly, you can’t get a decent bass brand new for $650—period! The wood itself costs more than that. It has to be properly seasoned and it takes a highly trained (and therefore highly paid) eye to see when the wood is just right. Why is that important? Because if the wood is still green, it will continue to lose moisture. As it loses moisture, it shrinks. As it shrinks, the bass will warp and start to pull itself apart at the seams. By the end of a couple of years, it’s just kindling. Properly seasoned wood costs and that’s all there is to it. No company could stay in business selling high quality basses for $650. So the bass has to be a piece of crap. Do not buy off the internet unless your instructor looks it over first in person! CAVEAT EMPTOR! And if you tell your instructor you’ve found a good bass online for $800 or something, he or she is going to tell you to forget it without even bothering to look at it. Basically, look to spend between $2500 to $3500 for a good bass. When you get a new instrument, always change the strings right away. Factory strings usually blow. A new set of double bass strings will run you about $130 more or less. then there's lessons and books--that's pricey too.

The other problem is that you might find a bass that’s put together okay and the wood is okay but the setup isn’t okay. It doesn’t handle well—maybe the strings are too close to the body or the sound seems muffled or the string height adjuster wheels on the bridge don’t turn worth a crap. This is where a luthier comes in. Those problems can be fixed by a luthier and the bass can become very playable. Also when your bow needs to be re-haired, you want the luthier to do this for you. It takes him about 20 minutes or so and you don’t pay that much for it (unless he’s backed up and then it might take a week or so). There really is no other way to get this essential work done on your bass and bows. To be a double bassist, you must have access to a luthier.

 

[Futwick]

This group is the Tattletales who originally came out of Cincinnati around 1949 where they started off as the Teddy Raymore Quartet. They became very popular in the area and decided to try for the big time nationally. Raymore, the pianist and leader, couldn't do it because he was a family man with too many commitments. He bowed out but wished them well. The band's bassist, Lee Tompkins, recruited Ernie Mariani out of Florida to play piano. They had played in big bands together right after the war. Their fist gig outside of Cincinnati was in Detroit in 1952 at the Bowling Green Show Bar. They were booked as the Tattletales although I don't know how the name came about. They played regularly at Baker's Keyboard Lounge and signed a contract with Dee Gee Records, owned by Dizzy Gillespie (DG--get it?).

Tompkins wrote a lot of music, he was university educated in music as were all the members of the band (that used to matter). One song he was working on the trumpeter, Larry Gilbert, wrote the lyrics for. They recorded it on Dee Gee under the title "Why Do You Have to Go Home." The stations played it and people liked it and wanted to know where to buy copies. Dee Gee was so small, though, that it had no distribution. The DJs sent the song to "Downbeat" magazine which rated it a B+. Stan Kenton's arranger, Pete Rugulo, heard the song and loved it. He called Tompkins and asked if he could record an arrangement that he had written of it to be recorded by June Christy who had gotten her start with Kenton but was now branching out on her own. Tompkins and Gilbert said ok. "Why Do You Have to Go Home" was originally recorded as a single to accompany the 1954 release of Christy's now legendary "Something Cool" 10-inch album. The following year, the album was re-released as a 12-inch LP. In addition to the song "Something Cool" which was Christy's signature song, it has the first vocal recording (that I know of) of "Midnight Sun" with lyrics added by Johnny Mercer. The album founded the "vocal cool" sub-movement of jazz, apparently a subset of the cool jazz movement.

Tompkins recalled that "Why Do You Have to Go Home" was often played in bars at last call and in theatres after the last showing for the night. "That's kind of impressive," he said. Eventually, Larry Gilbert quit the band and went back to Cincinnati and so Tompkins recruited Ernie Bernhard on trumpet and male vocal. Then lead singer Gerri Adams left the band to record with Frankie Laine. For 8 months, the band had no female lead singer until a DJ in Canada recommended Irene Kral who was doing a stint in Woody Herman's band. She agreed to join and stayed with them through 1954 and 55 before leaving to record with Junior Mance and Maynard Ferguson.

Despite extended gigs in New York, Cleveland, LA and a couple of more minor hits, the Tattletales broke up in the late 50s. Lee Tompkins settled down to a regular 9-to-5 job living in a house on Indiana Street in Detroit just south of the Jeffries Freeway with his wife and two kids. I spend many a summer at that fine old house (which still stands) in the early 60s. You see, Lee Tompkins is my uncle (he now lives in Jacksonville, FL and is in his 80s) and i supposed I am following in his footsteps as a double bassist.

Some of you may be wondering if Irene Kral is any relation to Roy Kral who had a successful musical partnership with Jackie Cain as "Roy & Jackie". Yes, Roy is brother to Irene (who died some years ago). In fact, my uncle became such good friends with Roy and Jackie that he spent many a night sleeping at their house and even after getting married and having children they would visit Roy and Jackie when they were taking time off from touring and recording. Irene's albums are not easy to find although they are out there. She is an absolutely incredible singer. There are two versions of June Christy's "Something Cool" album on CD--the original 12-inch album (a bluish cover) and a comp released in 1991 that contains the accompanying singles (a greenish cover). This CD version has my uncle's song on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Cool

 

[bassfiddlesteve]

I love this post!

I joined this forum last year but just discovered this. I play double bass in a couple of jazz groups, and I'm really into jazz history and the role of the bass through the years.

- Steve

 

[BlueTrain]

What an interesting subject and I'm glad someone else just noticed it, too.

I think a bass makes a better rhythm accompaniment than do drums, although other things enter into the matter, like the placement of the different instruments relative to the listener (or the microphone). Some of the dance bands in the 20s also used tubas or smaller horns which created a strong hopping sound to the music (my description--you may not hear any such hopping). The drums tend to make for noisy music, to put it one way.

There is a curious instrument, a variation of a guitar with two necks, that seems to be confined to Austrian folk music. The upper neck is not fingered (or at least I've never seen it played that way) but is apparently for the bass part, the lower neck is for the melody. Haven't seen one in person but there're fairly common in some YouTube videos, usually accompanying zithers and hackbretts or hammered dulcimers.