STRING ALONG

What’s so funny about this? The title of this joke is actually an idiom onto itself and could have been used for my other blog, Rolls of the Tongue. But I’ve decided to leave it here at What’s So Funny?. In the cartoon accompanying this joke we see a talking violin lolling around a sofa, complaining to its owner, a blind guitar player. He might be playing the blues or he might not. What is clear is that he loves Lucille, because that’s what he’s saying or singing. The question remains, who or what is Lucille? Is it his girlfriend, or is it his guitar? It’s not uncommon for musicians to give names to their instruments. Since they play them all the time, they form an emotional bond with the instrument. B.B. King, the great blues guitarist also happens to have a guitar named Lucille. In the cartoon, we see a violin lying on the couch and it’s that violin that’s doing the main talking in the joke. The violin says to the guitarist that it’s “tired of playing second fiddle to an old guitar.”