Ukulele Special

Domestic quarral often begins, when the madam of the residence blames her husbund that he does not love her anymore since he didn't bring her flowers when returning home from work. Well, what do you do to find a solution to such a dilemma? I found a reasonable suggestion, illustrated below. All you need is some ukuleles - and a little help from your friends! Enjoy a performance by The Ukulele Orchestra of GB demonstrating their solution to the classic dilemma contained in the sentence of "You Don't bring me Flowers"

The ukulele has for a long time been considered a novelty instrument, belonging to light entertainment in vaudeville or in the dusty groves of recordings by Cliff Edwards (aka Ukulele Ike), Roy Smeck, Anette Hanshaw a.o., always also a handy tool to be used for serenading in old black and white movies of the past. The instrument, however, has been taken seriously in Hawaii and by fans of the Hawaiian music tradition. The ukulele is of Hawaiian origins and has been treated skillfully by numerous Hawaiian musicians. One of Hawaii's ukulele legends, still performing in his late nineties, is Bill Tapia, known as The Duke of Uke. A small career profile of Bill Tapia available here

I found a short fragment of a performance featuring Bill Tapia playing and singing "Little Grass Shack", hope you to enjoy

The accompanying ukulele player with Bill Tapia in the video fragment above is another legend of the instrument. Lyle Ritz single-handedly transformed the ukulele from a novelty to a legitimate jazz instrument, when he in 1957 recorded an album using the ukulele as a solo instrument in a jazz setting. This album has been re-issued on a cd in 2004, learn more about this and the career of Lyle Ritz clicking picture below

Ukulele players like Bill Tapia and Lyle Ritz have inspired a new generation of young players to further develop their chops. I found a video performance by a trio of youngsters named ABC Jazz Ukulele to illustrate this

Jo