Go on, show some pluck!
THE UKELELE HANDBOOK BY GAVIN PRETOR-PINNEY & TOM HODGKINSON (Bloomsbury £14.99)
Strum along: Enthusiasm for the ukelele is 支援する and にわか景気ing
Whoo-hoo! Hurrah for another pluckin’ music craze! And this one has gone 全世界の. From Bondai Beach to Bognor, Mississippi to Margate, the humble, once derided ukulele (don’t について言及する George Formby) is pluckin’ up a 嵐／襲撃する.
It is 存在 strummed and twanged 世界的な in clubs, pubs, schools and, I must 自白する, in my own living-room where I twang a way for hours on end practising my fretting and finger-rolls.
Although I say it myself, （頭が）ひょいと動く Dylan would probably punch the 空気／公表する and rasp ‘冷静な／正味の, babe’ if he could but hear my （判決などを）下すing of Blowin’ In The 勝利，勝つd. So you can certainly take it from me that the inspirational Ukulele Handbook is 運命にあるd to become the 公式の／役人 new ukulele Bible.
Brilliantly 収集するd by two uke-playing fanatics, it 会社にする／組み込むs how-to-play 指示／教授／教育s for beginners, chord charts, handy fingering tips, a medley of 平易な-to-learn songs, and the 絶対 gripping history of the small, adorable four-string 小型の guitar which was born in Hawaii in 1879 and which you can now buy for as little as £15 in your High Street music shop.
£18m
What George Formby's film 契約 would be 価値（がある） today
Here, lavishly illustrated, are 詳細（に述べる）s of the 広大な／多数の／重要な uke 開拓するs - Honolulu’s Manuel 修道女s who （手先の）技術d the first 公式の／役人 uke in 1880, acclaimed groups of uke-twanging Hawaiian lovelies in grass skirts and hibiscus garlands, King ‘Happy Dave’ Kalakaua (1836-91) at his lavish palace, 側面に位置するd by his uke-選ぶing Singing Boys as he entertains Scottish author and uke fan, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Queen Liliuokalani (1838-1917) prolific songwriter who famous love-song Aloha Oe was immortalised in 1961 by uke-playing Elvis Presley in the Blue Hawaii movie.
急速な／放蕩な 今後 to the 1920s, when the uke captivated America. There followed an 爆発 of teach-yourself 手動式のs. U.S. 器具 製造者s jumped の上に the bandwagon producing thousands of fancy ukes, and everyone was singing along to songs with 肩書を与えるs like Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki 支持を得ようと努める.
When the craze 攻撃する，衝突する Britain, Nancy Mitford strummed and even Edward, Princ e of むちの跡s, enraptured by a trip to Hawaii, took uke lessons (and, no 疑問, crooned Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki 支持を得ようと努める to the long-苦しむing Wallis Simpson).
But as authors Prater-Pinney and Hodgkinson explain, the uke took a みごたえのある dive in the 1930s. It began to be seen as a joke. Hawaiian imagery became the stuff of comedy. Enter Laurel and Hardy, with bowler hats, hibiscus garlands and pineapples, twanging their ukes in Sons Of The 砂漠.
P.G. Wodehouse, in his 1934 novel Thank You, Jeeves had the titular manservant 脅すing to やめる his 職業 rather than listen to the ‘infernal din’ of Bertie Wooster playing his uke and warbling ‘I Want an Automobile With a Horn that Goes Toot Toot’. One anti-uke wag at the time 発言／述べるd that ‘a gentleman is a man who knows how to play the ukulele - but doesn’t’.
Packing them in: The Ukelele Orchestra of 広大な／多数の／重要な Britain can fill the Albert Hall
Which brings us to George Formby (1904-61). Let us not sneer. It is a fact that Lancashire-born Formby was a ukulele 広大な／多数の／重要な, a dazzling uke player, and his own life story is 価値（がある） several 容積／容量s.
His formidable wife and 商売／仕事 partner, Beryl, was certainly the major 軍隊 behind his success, but she made him wretched by not sleeping with him and, at the 高さ of his 人気 when he was 収入 the 同等（の） of £5?million a year, 許すing him only five shillings a day pocket-money.
Formby’s innuendo-laden ditties were 抱擁する 攻撃する，衝突するs. Remember With My Little Ukulele In My 手渡す and his Little Stick Of Blackpool 激しく揺する? Typical of the Formby 判型 is Chinese Laundry Blues, about the activities of Mr Wu. A 見本 couplet goes: Now Mr Wu, he’s got a naughty 注目する，もくろむ that flickers/You せねばならない see it wobble when he’s アイロンをかけるing ladies’ blouses’.
By 1939 Formby had become Britain’s highest-paid 芸能人. His song When I’m きれいにする Windows - a 広大な／多数の／重要な favourite of the late Queen Mother, incidentally - sold 150,000 copies in a month.
After it was banned by the BBC, Lord Reith 述べるing it as a ‘disgusting little ditty’, bossy Beryl marched into his office, gave him what for and made him broadcast an 陳謝. But he still didn’t 解除する the 禁止（する）.
Ukelele King: George Formby
A にわか景気 began again in the 1950s onwards. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Tiny Tim, George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and Joan Baez were all 熱心な pluckers. One 優れた uke hero was Hawaiian-born イスラエル Kamakawiwo’ole (1959-97) - morbidly o bese, （麻薬）常用者d to food, booze and 麻薬s - who made the uke 冷静な／正味の again. After becoming a born-again Christian and 放棄するing ‘実体s’, his album 直面するing 未来 sold two million copies in 1993.
現在の British uke 星／主役にするs are the Ukulele Orchestra Of 広大な／多数の／重要な Britain, who can fill the Albert Hall and play to 170,000 people in Hyde Park, and who play anything from Bach and Handel to the Sex ピストルs and the Kinks.
People may scoff at the uke, but to strum in a room packed 十分な of fellow pluckers all singing along to Honolulu Baby, for example, is as good as it gets for uke 熱中している人s. Just check the web for the clubs springing up - The Grand Old Ukes Of York, The Herne Bay City Ukers, hundreds of ’em... - and see, also, how tuition and sheet music are just a click away.
As the authors point out, you can master four chords in as many hours, and with just four chords you are able to play hundreds of songs. 承認する, it’s true that my ex-隣人 used to bang on the 塀で囲む when I was practising. He once quipped: ‘If music be the food of love, then ukulele music is the syrup of figs.’ 哀れな git.
No 事柄. Until recently I played in a ukulele 禁止（する）d - The Funky Pluckers (as seen on CCTV), our coast-to-coast 小旅行する of the 小島 of Sheppey 存在 the stuff of myth. The Pluckers’ 見解／翻訳／版 of Freight Train, 会社にする／組み込むing spoons, kazoos, washboard and whistles, was a 勝利.
式のs, we 解散するd after two gigs, as is the way with 禁止（する）d. But the legend lives on. Better to やめる while you’re at the 最高の，を越す. As the authors 約束, ‘We can all become music-製造者s’, and their fab 調書をとる／予約する helpfully tells you how.
Yay! Uke can play too. Anybody can. Just think Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki 支持を得ようと努める and get pluckin’.
