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Original Post By:
Guest_michael
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
| I really love Jim Beloff's book The ukulele a visual history but come up empty as to any other good historical and biographical books on the subject. Anyone know of any other great resources in print? |
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Posted By:
Guest_Howlin' Hobbit
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
"Roy Smeck - The Wizard Of The Strings In His Life And Times" by Vincent Cortese.
http://tinyurl.com/9k8b7
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Posted By:
Guest_Mimmo
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
Hi Michael, just a question that maybe is on this book:
when the low G tuning was introduced?
any suggestion?
Mimmo
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Posted By:
Guest_michael
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
| Good question. I didn't recall it being mentioned in the book however as a guitar player turned ukulele player I suppose it was probably someone who probably played the guitar too. Anyone out there got a clue about who first introduced low G? How did we get gcea to be standard also? I think the machete which early ukuleles were fashioned after were tuned open g chord dgbd so how did it evolve to the present day gcea? Maybe someone really famaliar with any of Ernest Kaai's music or Jesse Kalima can tell us if they were usuing a low G in any of their music. Okay you historians, we need your help
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Posted By:
Guest_Uke Jackson
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
| Not exclusively about the 'ukulele, but about one of our greatest 'ukulele players and how he came to the music -- read "Hawaiian Son" by Eddie Kamae and a co-author whose name i forget. I loved this book.
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Posted By:
Guest_Ed P
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
| I had heard that it was Herb Ohta that decided to try a low G to get those few extra bass notes for his jazz melody pieces. I'm no historian though. I am also under the impression that GCEA did not even become the standard tuning until rather late in the ukulele era.
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Posted By:
Guest_mL
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Date: 2/12/2006 |
I have read Jim and Eddie's books. The wiz Smexk looks intereesting; any one have references to Smeck audio (digital) and or video of him playing? Is their any hot ukers tht record Smeck works?
I am reading a book called Hula Blues about the famous (1920-30's) Johnny Noble. Not focused on uke, but Hawaiian music scene in that era. If you like jazz, swing, Hawaiian, and popular music, you can see the roots of it all happening in Hawaii; there is some sheet music in it too; lots of photos.
Get it from the Library.
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Posted By:
Guest_Jim T.
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Date: 2/13/2006 |
GCEA tuning is found in Ernest Kaai's 1906 ukulele method, published in Honolulu; by 1915, the year of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, it could be found in all the standard method books, including Kia, Kealakai, and Bailey (all three published on the mainland).
GCEA is the "taro patch method" of tuning the ukulele, that is, the tuning of the five-string Madeiran rajao (which became the five-string taro-patch) -- DGCEA -- applied to the four-string ukulele. (In Madeira, the ukulele's ancestor, the machete, was tuned DGBD.)
At the risk of sounding immodest, a good source of historical information about the ukulele is the article John King and I published in the 2003 Hawaiian Journal of History, "A New History of the Origins and Development of the Ukulele, 1838-1915."
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Posted By:
Guest_michael
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Date: 2/13/2006 |
| Much mahalos Jim-T. Where can I find that Journal. Is it for sale or available at the Library here in Hawaii?
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Posted By:
Guest_Jim T.
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Date: 2/13/2006 |
| Michael -- contact me off board with your mailing address and I'd be happy to send you a copy.
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Posted By:
Guest_Geoff Rezek
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Date: 2/13/2006 |
Want factual info on the history of the Ukulele?
Contact John King
http://www.nalu-music.com/
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Posted By:
Guest_Jim T.
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Date: 2/14/2006 |
| Geoff is right: nobody knows more about the history of the ukulele than John. And few people play it better, either.
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