My ukulele book is available. The book aims to help ukulele strummers play the tune as they strum. You can learn a little about it in the video below:
Information on how to buy it can also be found on the ‘how-to-buy-my-book’ page.
From 4th November 2009, I will donate to youngcare half the purchase price of any book sold.
If you don’t want to buy my book (that’s ok), please consider donating to youngcare yourself.
I found this picture on the State Library of Victoria website. I believe it was first published in The Argus newspaper (page 1) on Tuesday, 3 July 1945.
MUSIC WHEREVER HE GOES!
“Driver R. T. Wilson, of Victoria, took his ukulele with him for the 7th Division landing at Balikpapen. This picture was taken at a Netherlands Indies staging point. (Australian Official photo.)”
This is the second driver (see War and the Ukulele) that I’ve found who played ukulele. This particular ukulele appears to be of Hawaiian construction, and I like to think it is a Kumalae uke (but I don’t really know).
Balikpapen, Indonessia is a seaport city on the eastern coast of Borneo island, Indonesia in the East Kalimantan province. coordinates 1°15′S 116°50′E (from Wikipedia)
Photo used with permission of the State Library of Victoria.
Another newspaper report…
LASS FROM LANCASHIRE HERE
Petite, blonde Ethel Formby, sister of the famous George, arrived in Melbourne from Sydney yesterday to fulfil an engagement with Tivoli Theatres, opening on October 11 in Folies Bergeres. Later she expects to tour Australia entertaining servicemen.
Had not Ethel followed in [George's] footsteps, she could have made a name for herself by her own good looks and bright personality. She is little more than 5ft in height, with hazel eyes and fair complexion.
Taking up the ukulele, one of the many instruments in the Formby house, Ethel taught herself to play and sing, and it wasn’t long before she began to get engagements in music halls and revues, singing Lancashire dialect songs to banjo accompaniment.
In private life, Ethel is Mrs J. A. Gibson, wife of Battle of Britain pilot, Flt-Lt Gibson, DFC, a New Zealander serving with the RAF, whom she met and married in England a month after the war broke out.
(From The Argus, Saturday, 2 October 1943, page 8.)
A photo of her might be found here
The National Library has an interesting collection of Australian newspapers online. A few clippings from the mass follows:
UKULELE MUSIC BORN IN GERMANY
–
Hawaiians Wrongly Blamed
Mr Frits Hart deplored the passing of the traditional Hawaiian chant. “Although the Islanders sing very charmingly, the so-called Hawaiian music associated with ukuleles and steel guitars originates mainly from Germany or Italy, and is harmonised in the worst possible taste by Americans.”
(From The Argus, Tuesday 28 May 1935, page 8.)
UKULELE AND BAIL
[To support an argument that a justice of the peace should be able to admit a person to bail, whether or not the person had applied in a court of law for bail, councillor Hooper offered the following sad case.]
A young man who was inebriated and who was carrying a ukulele had been arrested and charged with unlawful possession. His only offence seemed to be that he was playing his own ukulele. The case had been dismissed, but the man had had to stay in the metropolitan gaol for three days because he had not made application to a Court for bail.
(From The Argus Tuesday 18 October 1938, page 16.)
Here are some jokes from the 1920s involving the ukulele. The first is about a ‘flapper’, which was a term used to describe a young woman of a certain disposition. The photo below might prepare you for what is to follow.
A flapper walked into a music store and asked to see some ukuleles. The clerk [sales representative] showed her a few and she couldn’t decide between a Martin and a Gibson. She seemed to favour the Gibson a trifle, the clerk thought, so thinking to help her he said: ‘Better take the Gibson, Miss, You can’t go wrong with a Gibson ukulele.’ Quick as a flash, the young lady replied: ‘Gimme the Martin, then.’
Then there was the story of Mr Mortimer K. Plushbottom, the inventor of the ukulele sound hole. His idea was to sell these sound holes to music shops to give away to potential customers. Once a person has a ukulele sound hole, they’ll want a ukulele, or so Plushbottom believed.
Anyway, Plushbottom resolved in 1928 to run for President of the USA, on the strength of his services to ukulele players of America (remember the sound holes). He thought 5o ooo ukulele players can’t be wrong.
Of his promised reforms, the following item stood out:
The first plank in my platform will favour the immediate execution of all saxophone players and a constitutional amendment making ukulele playing compulsory.
I wonder what became of Mortimer and his ideas…
Quotations adapted from From “Tom Foolery” in the Music Trade Review 86, 10 (1928), p. 22.
Reproduced courtesy of The International Arcade Museum and the Musical Box Society International.
The following sales statistics come from the magazine Billboard vol. 79, No. 16, 1 July 1967, p. 47:
1956 1966
(Million units) (Million units)
Pianos 19.7 23.3
Guitars 2.6 10.0
Drums 0.2 1.1
Harmonicas 0.4 1.0
Zithers and Bongos 0.02 1.1
Accordians 1.5 1.0
UKULELES 1.5 0.8
The articles ascribes the change between the years to the Beatles. (But George and Paul play(ed) ukulele!)
Just thought I’d post this video –
I’m trying out new strings (Worth clear) on my Ayers ukulele.
From “Tom Foolery” in the Music Trade Review 83, 6 (1926), p. 13:
This is a comparatively new instrument, but its origin is already somewhat obscured, 4,739 different persons claiming the honor of having introduced the instrument to America. We have investigated it thoroughly and find that the discover of the ukulele was Christopher Columbus, who found some Indians (Red Men, as he called them) playing ukuleles in Florida in 1492. The Indians said that they purchased the instruments from C. Bruno & Sons. (Inquiry reveals that Bruno is still selling ukes in Florida.)
The next appearance of the ukulele in American history was about twenty-five years later when Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for a ukulele. To-day it would take more ukuleles than you could shake a stick at to buy it back.
Another story that sheds light upon the place of the ukulele in history deals with Sam Beugeleisen, who was traveling for Tonk in 1851. He made such a fast trip to the Pacific Coast and was burning up the territory making sales that he was unable to stop in California and kept right on to Hawaii before the four-wheel brakes in his Buick would stop. On the beach at Waikaki he discovered a quaintly garbed native girl wearing a dress of some shredded material strumming an instrument which we know to-day as the ukulele.
“How much for the what-do-you-call-it?” demanded Mr. B.
“$5.”
“Too much. I can get ‘em made in Chicago for $4.99.”
“All right, go to Chicago,” the maiden said. And he did.
Following the introduction of the ukulele to America Harry Hunt of Ditson’s began a campaign to have the poor little instrument called by their proper name, which sounds like “ookelellie,” but he has not had much success, even his New York Dealers’ Association insisting upon coming right out in the open and referring to them in Mr Hunt’s presence as “you-kelaylays.”
Reproduced courtesy of The International Arcade Museum and the Musical Box Society International.
Here is a slightly adapted extract from my book:
The ukulele is a small guitar with four nylon or gut strings. Its strings are tuned in a similar way to the first four strings of a guitar, but at a higher pitch. A significant difference is that its tuning is re-entrant, that is, the fourth string is tuned high rather than low as it would be on a guitar – but more about that interesting fact in my book.
Many books trace the recent origin of the ukulele to Hawaii in the late nineteenth century. Stories tell of Portuguese immigrants to Hawaii who developed the ukulele in 1879 from a instrument called a Machette.[1] I like to think of this as a rediscovery. One type of sixteenth century guitar was ukulele-like. These guitars were small, had four courses of strings that were sometimes tuned, respectively, G C E A – a popular tuning for modern ukuleles.[2]
The first western reference to the word ‘ukulele’ that I can find is by the Rev. Henry T. Cheever. Cheever tells how his sleep was horribly disturbed by ukuleles – not the musical instrument, but the insect – fleas![3] The name somehow was given to the small guitar around 1879. The instrument (and, I suppose, the insect) is pronounced ‘Oo-coo-lay-lay’, but I still say ‘You-ku-lay-le’ myself.
Around 1915, the ukulele (the instrument) was introduced to mainland USA, at least this was the time the ukulele was really noticed there. By the 1920s it had become very popular, being promoted around the world by professional entertainers. During the 1920s, if a man was serious about a woman, he might have bought her a ukulele. And, if there were no serious men about, a woman could always buy a ukulele for herself.[4] People like May Singhi Breen (died 1970) and Roy Smeck (1900-1994) played intricate melodies on the uke, and encouraged others to see it as a solo instrument too. Jim Beloff notes that both Jesse Kalima (1920-1980) and Eddie Kamae are credited with developing styles of chord soloing – where the tune is played as the chords are strummed or plucked.[5]
The little ukulele was ‘big’ again in the 1940s and 1950s, survived the surprise of Tiny Tim in the 1960s, and now, in the early 21st century, is becoming an instrument of influence once more. My little book is a humble effort to promote the playing of tunes on the ukulele.
[2] Eg., Michael Fink, “Renaissance guitar music for the classical guitarist”, http://www.lgv-pub.com/Essays/Ren_Guit_Mus_-_Class_Guit.pdf (accessed 5 April 2009).
[3] Henry T. Cheever, Life in the Sandwich Islands (London, 1851), p. 107 (see Victory to the Ukulele)
[4] The Library of Congress holds a photograph from 1926 of five happy young women with ukuleles, but I cannot say how they got them. Photograph at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/npcc.16039 Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html (accessed 5 April 2009). I first found this picture on www.shorpy.com, a site that holds a wealth of vintage photography. (See Happy Girls with Ukuleles — 1926)
[5] Jim Beloff, The ukulele: a visual history (California: Miller Freeman, 1997), p.51.
From a reading of Wodehouse on the topic of romance, one might believe that the ukulele player has an unfair advantage — but that would only be in the year 1919, when A Damsel in Distress first appeared.
Consider his [George's] position, you faint-hearted and self-pitying young men who think you have a tough row to hoe just because, when you pay your evening visit with the pound box of candy under your arm, you see the handsome sophomore from Yale sitting beside her on the porch, playing the ukulele. If ever the world has turned black to you in such a situation and the moon gone in behind a cloud, think of George Bevan and what he was up against. You are at least on the spot. You can at least put up a fight. If there are ukuleles in the world, there are also guitars, and tomorrow it may be you and not he who sits on the moonlit porch; it may be he and not you who arrives late. Who knows? Tomorrow he may not show up till you have finished the Bedouin’s Love Song and are annoying the local birds, roosting in the trees, with Poor Butterfly.
But if you read Thank you, Jeeves (1934), written by the same author, a different attitude to the ukulele (or its cousin, the Banjolele) might be detected.
Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that he is a man of sudden, strong enthusiasms and that, when in the grip of one of these, he becomes a remorseless machine — tense, absorbed, single-minded. It was so in the matter of this banjolele-playing of mine. Since that night at the Alhambra when the supreme virtuosity of Ben Bloom and his Sixteen Baltimore Buddies had fired me to take up the study of the instrument, not a day had passed without its couple of hours assiduous practice. And I was twanging the strings like one inspired when the door opened and Jeeves shovelled in the foul strait-waistcoat specialist… [Sir Roderick, who said:]
‘You’re a public menace. For weeks, it appears, you have been making life a hell for all your neighbours with some hideous musical instrument. I see you have it now. How dare you play that thing in a respectable block of flats? Infernal din!’
Some people have no heart.
The following is reproduced from The Music Trade Review 85, 16 (October 1927) p. 27. It gives the standard dimensions for soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles – to help people tell the difference between ukuleles that are toys and those that are musical instruments. Enjoy…
1. Scale length (Distance from nut to bridge):
a. Standard Size Ukulele ………………. 13 to 13 3/4 inches
b. Concert Size Ukulele ……………….. 13 3/4 to 14 1/2 inches
c. Tenor Size Ukulele ………………….. 14 1/2 to 15 3/4 inches
2. Must not have less than twelve (12) frets.
3. Back must be curved or arched.
4. Body must not be less than 2 inches deep at the lower bout.
5. Top of sound board must be of one-twelfth (1/12) inches veneer, approximately.
6. Frame or sides must be lined.
7. Sound-hole must be trimmed with celluloid or inlaid purfling.
8. Ribs must be sanded or finished off smooth.
9. Frets, after correct regulation, must be slightly rounded, to enable the player to execute the glissando without cutting fingers or strings.
10. Height of strings:
a. Above top edge of first fret must be not less than one-thirty-second (1/32) inch nor more than three-sixty-fourths (3/64) inch.
b. Above top edge of twelfth fret must be not less than one-eighth (1/8) inch nor more than five-thirty-seconds (5/32) inch.
Passage reproduced courtesy of The International Arcade Museum and the Musical Box Society International.
