Here's a trivia question for you. (I once knew the answer, but have since forgotten, so I hope someone out there can let us all know.)

The blues players in the the Mississippi delta back in the 1920s-30s had *names* (words) for the two common open tunings. The same name applied to open E and open D, since they're essentially the same tuning at two different pitches, with the tonic ("one") note on the open top and bottom strings as well as on the open 4th string. The other name referred to (I think) open G.

I spent a little time fooling with a slide and with open tunings for a couple of years in the early 70s. I was playing a lot then, but spent most of my time in standard tuning and never learned enough varied licks in the open tunings to really satisfy myself and get thoroughly into it. I think I started out with one tune in each of the two above-mentioned tunings, but eventually forgot how to do *anything* in open G and only continued my sporadic attempts at slide playing in open D.

I used a little cylindrical glass pill bottle as a slide, and even after I quit even trying to play very much slide, I used the bottle to contain my picks. My two metal fingerpicks fit inside, and I "clipped" the plastic thumbpick over the lip of the opening, with the flat side facing out and the curved loop blocking the opening enough to keep the fingerpicks inside.

The pill bottle was in pretty common use, and the best source for a bottle-slide was a very popular and widely available over-the-counter cold remedy called Coricidin. After my original bottle was long lost and I wanted to try sliding again some years later, I learned that pills by then only came in plastic bottles -- bummer!

More recently, I've seen replica bottles for sale in music stores, under a brand name that spells the original medicine's name with about a dozen extra letters ("Corresseyedien" or some such). I suppose copyright law prevents their using the original spelling, even though the medicine no longer seems to be on the market. I read the label, and learned that the original pill bottle slide was "legendary" because it was used by Duane Allman. These latter-day faux pill bottles, by the way, cost 'way more than the the real bottles used to cost *with* the pills in them!

I don't doubt that Duane did use a Coricidin bottle, if only because *everyone* did back then. It had absolutely flat sides, and the height of the flat part of the bottle was just slightly greater than the width of a typical steel-string fingerboard. The inner diameter of the bottle allowed you to maintain firm control by slightly flexing your finger (ring finger, for most players) inside it -- a narrower bottle would force you to keep the finger too straight, and a wider one would be so loose you couldn't control it. The relatively thin glass made for a nice ringing sound -- better than what you could get with an actual neck of a wine or whiskey bottle, which normally was made of thicker glass and often had tapered, rather than parallel, sides. Best of all, the little pill bottle came ready-to-play; you didn't have to break off any glass and grind the sharp edges down before you could play with it.