I can remember "Mr Gladstone's Bag" singing it, they were copying a recording on an Edison phonograph cylinder. They used some sort of megaphones which made a scraping/hissing noise and a "Pneumatic Nightingale" an overgrown version of one those water-filled bird-warbler whistles. Their contraption was made out of a whistle stuck down the spout of a watering can, powered by a car tyre pump. The actual sound was very similiar to that of the recording.