Posts Tagged ‘Honolulu Baby’
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“Honolulu Baby”
0June 10, 2017 by admin
The guitarist sang, “Imagine all the people,” but no imagination was required. The crowd was as impenetrable as those at the Sistine Chapel. Finally, I broke from the pack and hurried to Bethesda Fountain. The park workers who had guided the delivery trucks to the site of the fund-raiser on Wednesday and Thursday had assured me that all would be back to normal today, and they did not lie.
“Have you got time for a hula today?”
The woman smiled, hesitated, then the large man she was with said, “Yes, of course.” At the end of the dance, he handed me a twenty. I asked him if he wanted change, but he waved me off.
I got my first 20-dollar tip one fall day in 2007. An old man had been sitting on the bench with his attendant through several songs. The attendant walked up with the twenty while I was singing; at the end of the song, I walked to the old man to thank him.
“Do you know ‘Honolulu Baby’?” he asked. I had to admit I did not. “If you’re going to sing the ukulele canon, you really should learn it.” I took his advice. Over the next few years I hoped to run into him again to thank him, because “Honolulu Baby” has become a mainstay of my repertoire.
A woman accompanying 2 developmentally challenged teenagers, a boy and a girl, came by. The girl wanted to hula, but mostly just stood still and smiled. The woman, camera in hand, showed her the moves, but we got to the end of “The Hukilau Song” without hula-liftoff.
A woman took pictures from the edge of the plaza. Most photographers get their shot and walk away. The woman, seeing me see her, approached with a handful of quarters.
A 40-something man with his 2 daughters stopped to dance. They were from London, although the man was originally from Belgium. He gave each of the girls a dollar for me, then stuck around to chat about the political situations in both the US and UK.
A young woman sat on the bench in front of me. She appeared to be writing in a notebook; from time to time she looked up to listen. After 30 minutes or so, she gathered her things and walked up to me. She put a dollar in my case, then asked me questions about my music. “I’ve heard ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips,’ but all those other songs are new to me. Did you write them?” Her name was Sophie. She used to play classical guitar, but now she thought a ukulele was the way to go.
Two guys walked past. “Aloha,” I said. They stopped and consulted, then walked back to toss a handful of change into my case.
As usual, at the end of my set, I counted my take: $26.53. A good day, however, got better, when I unfolded the dollar I got from Sophie and found this drawing.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Baby, The Hukilau Song, Tiptoe through the Tulips
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Lost and Found
0September 22, 2016 by admin
On another warm September day, occupying center stage, with only the Boyd Family Singers in the arcade to compete with, I sang to the people as they walked by. For the first 15-20 minutes, nobody noticed me, then a boy of 9 or 10 came from behind me, where he’d been listening from the rim of the fountain, and threw some coins in my case. After my first break I counted it, 4 cents.
I prefer to think that he liked my music, that, having no money, he rolled up his sleeves and fished 4 pennies from the fountain to give to me. The alternative, however, that he had made a childish gesture of disrespect, if not outright contempt, by de minimis tipping, was probably closer to the truth. Over the years, grown men have tossed pennies in my case. One even gave me a dime, then said, “You suck.”
A Spanish man held a toddler by the hand. The little girl bounced to the rhythms of “I Saw Stars.” When I waved a lei at her, she came running, like a bull to the cape. I doubled the lei to make a tiara for her, then sang a verse of “The Hukilau Song.” Her dad gave me a dollar.
Three Danes, 2 women and a man in their early 20s, stopped to dance. After 2 verses of “The Hukilau Song,” I chatted with the women while the man took up my uke and noodled around with some proficiency. All of sudden, he looked up, noticed that the larger group they were with had left without them, alerted the women and hurried off, but not before tossing $3 in my case.
A photographer shot video while I sang “Honolulu Baby.” When he was done, he gave me a quarter.
A 40-something woman with a big hat gave me a dollar; she had no time for a hula.
A small group of Italians wandered separately around the plaza, then reunited near me. One of them, a woman in her mid-30s, kept looking at me. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
Another woman in the group, perhaps 10 years younger, said, “Si.” Two more women joined us. “Do you all want to hula?”
“Si, si.”
Each one put a dollar in my case before grabbing a lei. I positioned 4 dancers, all women, while the 3 men in the group stood nearby and commented loudly as they danced. They were from different places in Southern Italy, from Rome to Calabria.
I had to leave after an hour to meet Mrs. Ukulele at the dermatologist. When I got to his office, I discovered I’d lost my indoor glasses. All I had were my shades.
After my examination, with no medical concerns except the stripes of tan on my feet from my sandals, we retraced my steps. There, on the rim of the fountain, were my glasses, safe in their hard case. Crisis averted, we exited the park, past the profusely podded catalpa, the guitarist at the Imagine Mosaic, the button sellers and cold water men.
Just before stepping out onto Central Park West, Mrs. Ukulele identified the morning glory-like vine with small yellow flowers that grew on the fence behind the benches: thunbergia alata, or Black-eyed Susan vine.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Baby, I Saw Stars, The Hukilau Song
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Right Back out There
0May 30, 2016 by admin
It was 90 degrees on Thursday, more like August than May. The spring flowers were largely gone, while the dog-roses flourished in the heat. Green spears of day lilies have shot up from the lush foliage; they’ll soon be here.
The cowboy owned the fountain, so I walked toward the boathouse, not without trepidation. The caricaturist was setting up. And no sign of the chameleon. I might have set up in the shade of the maple, but I saw a place to the left of the staircase, under a bush for shade, and along the main path to the boat rental, water fountain and restrooms. I’ve played this stage many times over the years.
A young couple, both of them short and overweight, tossed in a pair of Susan B’s. They were from Maine. We had not chatted long before I had leis around their necks and we were hula-ing at the Hukilau. There was something sweet and childlike about them, I thought they might be newlyweds. After the dance, the young man put a folding dollar in the case too.
Three cyclists stopped near me in the shade. They were from Argentina. “Have you got time for a hula today?” Only one of them spoke English. Straddling her bike, she watched, a little bored, as her mother and sister danced to “The Hukilau Song.” When they returned their leis and rode away, she tossed a dollar in my case.
A young woman walked briskly by and floated a fiver my way. “Thanks a lot,” I said, happy to have shed the curse of the chameleon.
An old man shuffled past, accompanied by a young man, as I was singing “Honolulu Baby.” The young man held back to listen. “Do you know this song.”
“Never heard it before. But I love the way you sing it.”
“It’s from a Laurel and Hardy movie, ‘Sons of the Desert.’ Ever hear of Laurel and Hardy?”
He thought for a moment. His eyes darted down the path, to where the old man had slowly made his way. “I think I have,” he said, “Gotta go.”
Another young man sauntered by, took a dollar out of his wallet, and set up for a selfie of himself and me. “Snapchat,” he said.
The old man’s aid walked back to me and gave me a buck. “What was that movie? King of the Desert?”
“Sons of the Desert.”
I ended the set with a lovely hula by a Lebanese woman living in Cambridge, who kicked in another fiver to bring my take to a respectable $17.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Baby, Laurel and Hardy, Sons of the Desert, The Hukilau Song
