A dolceola is a musical instrument

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

 resembling a miniature piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, but which is in fact a zither

Zither

The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary citera, northwestern Croatia, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures, including China...

 with a keyboard

Musical keyboard

A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument, particularly the piano. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the...

. The strings attached look like a harp. It is used in traditional holy blues and has an unusual, angelic, music-box sound. Dolceolas were made by the Toledo Symphony Company from 1903 to 1907.

Performers

Although the gospel musician Washington Phillips

Washington Phillips

Washington Phillips was a Texan gospel singer and musician. Phillips died in 1954 in Teague, Texas.- Biography :Phillips recorded eighteen songs, all between 1927 and 1929, though only sixteen survived...

 was thought to have played the dolceola on several of his recordings, he was actually playing a compound instrument he fashioned out of two East Boston Phonoharp company celestaphones. It consisted of two chord zithers, attached side by side, one of which had four chords, the other of which had five. He played them with his fingers, as other zither players do. Having nine chords to choose from, he also had fifteen courses of melody strings, which he contrived to tune in octaves rather than in unisons, thus giving him the 'angelic' sound he was famous for. His sixteen extant sides (available on the Yazoo, Document, Agram and P-Vine labels) were cut between 1927 and 1929 in Dallas, Texas. Mr. Phillips lived in Teague, Texas, where he raised sweet sorghum

Sweet sorghum

Sweet sorghum is any of the many varieties of sorghum which have a high sugar content. Sweet sorghum will thrive better under drier and warmer conditions than many other crops and is grown primarily for forage, silage, and syrup production....

 for sorghum molasses.

Paul Mason Howard, a Los Angeles musician who actually did play the dolceola, accompanied Lead Belly on some of his 1944 Capitol sides. A listen to those recordings, collected under the title Grasshoppers In My Pillow, reveals the characteristic clatter of the dolceola's three-level keyboard action. There is none of that on Phillips's recordings, though it is easy to understand why people thought he played one, given the multiple chord arrangement of his instrument.