Posts Tagged ‘Making Love Ukulele Style’
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A Slow Day under the Maple
0July 20, 2018 by admin
The park foliage drooped in the heat. Nothing new seems to have been planted this week. The big surprise was a dusty pink wood anemone in bloom under the pin oak by the road. In the shade by the lake, the jazz combo was reduced to a bass, drums and keyboard.
It looked as if center stage was mine. Past the big bubble man and snakes on segways, a woman had set up a table with manual typewriter, ready to write poems to order. I let her know I would set up near her before I saw the erhu player, scratching out “Besame Mucho.”
“Never mind.”
Under the shade of the maple, I began my set with “Making Love Ukulele Style.”
“Hey,” a man shouted as he walked by, “Can you spell ukulele backward?” I did and he kept walking.
A young family with 2 daughters walked by. “Have you got time for a hula today?”
“Absolutely,” said mom. The elder girl, about 7, was shy, but the younger was full of energy; she romped through 2 verses of “The Hukilau Song.” Dad coughed up a buck.
A 50-ish woman stopped to give me a dollar, followed by a woman whose kids were being drawn by a nearby caricaturist. Another caricaturist set up on the other side of me. He watched my act for a while, then packed up his stuff and moved on.
A young woman gave me a smile and a dollar. She had no time to hula.
As I wrapped up, 2 families with 4 kids under 5 agreed to hula. Draping leis around their necks, I gave them a quick lesson and sent them off to the hukilau. They started with enthusiasm, but before I got halfway through the first verse, their arms fell to their sides, smiles faded, boredom set in. Across the path, the moms started dancing, encouraging the kids to follow their lead, but it was no use. I brought the song to a merciful end. One of the dads made a dollar donation.
I played “Little Grass Shack,” stuffed 5 singles into my shirt pocket, packed up and went home.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Besame Mucho, Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style, The Hukilau Song
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Mr. Ukulele Goes Ukrainian
0July 12, 2018 by admin
It’s been a month since I last went a-busking. The heat, a long vacation, then a terrible cold kept me away. The park was verdant when I returned. Red begonias had been planted out for half a block along Central Park West. The swollen ovaries of the spent Stellas were as big as my thumb. Behind the benches, ageratum and allium made a purple apron in front of the dog roses, and, next to the pergola, hydrangea bore flowers just starting to turn blue.
Randy played his dobro at the Imagine Mosaic. I stopped to chat with him; as I left I shook his hand, each finger of which was armed with metal picks.
White morning glories had infiltrated the undergrowth. The jazz combo had crossed the road for the cool breezes off the lake, and the acrobats were making their noise on the promenade, where they belonged. It appeared center stage was mine, until I saw the accordion player sitting on a bench, talking to the Ukrainian artist.
“Are you still playing,” I asked him, “because I’d like to set up here.” He answered in a language I couldn’t understand; the Ukrainian was no help. “Do you speak English?” In response another torrent of noise. “I’m going to play here,” I told him.
Having laid out my leis and hula girls, I started with “Making Love Ukulele Style,” whereupon the accordionist squeezed out a doleful melody.
“No, no, no,” I told him. “I asked you, now I’m playing here.”
“OK, play,” he said, finding some English after all.
But as soon as I started, he did too. I felt the aloha spirit draining from me and approached him again. “What is your problem? You’ve got to stop.”
“Ten minutes,” he said.
“I know what 10 minutes is, do you?” No affect. “Ten minutes,” I said, pointing to my watch. I walked back to the fountain and sat down. After about 2 minutes, he packed up his instrument and left.
I stood up and started again. A man asked for a picture and gave me 2 bucks. A few minutes later, a couple danced to “Honolulu Eyes” and gave me another dollar. Another dollar came from a woman who wanted a picture, and 2 more from a woman who wanted to hula. Next came a family of 4 from Georgia who were driving up to the Adirondacks to spend a few days with a friend at his cabin. Somewhere in North Carolina they’d bought a ukulele for the kids in the car. They wouldn’t dance, but dad was interested in a 5-minute lesson. I taught him the D-G-A7 pattern, to which you can sing practically any song. That earned me $1.
The Ukrainian artist came by. “What’s with that friend of yours?” I asked him.
“No friend,” he said with a frown. “Russian. Ukraine and Russia no friends,” and he bumped his fists together to illustrate his meaning.
I continued to play in the heat. My voice was gone, my throat hurt. I stopped frequently to drink from my water bottle. Then I heard the accordion again; the Russian had set up by the stairs. In a flash, I became Ukrainian.
A man and his daughter walked by with $2 for me. “Thanks for the music,” he said.
The Russian had stopped playing and was filling a water bottle from the fountain’s pool. I had pleasant thoughts of amoebic dysentery, cholera and other water-borne diseases. As I sipped the last of my cool, clean water, I realized I was still sick with my cold. With 30 minutes left in my set, I sang “Little Grass Shack” and went home.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Eyes, Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style
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Tuning Up, 2018
0April 15, 2018 by admin
The weather forecast for Friday promised a beautiful day with temps in the 70’s, so Thursday night I got down my tenor uke and tuned up. The hum in my low-G string reminded me that I should have put a new one on last busking season. It takes a few days for a string to settle in, but there was no help for it; I spent my first day of busking retuning after every song.
Central Park at W. 72nd St. still had a wintry feel. The trees had not yet leafed out, although the spring flowers were starting to show: yellow and white daffodils, pale violet myrtle, blue chionodoxera, and scattered red and white tulips from some prior year’s planting. Behind the benches, a single 2-foot tall yellow fritillaria bloomed in the sun. Forsythia has started to show here, while deeper in the park it is already in full glory.
In my haste to start busking, I left my water bottle at home, but was happy to find the water fountains had been turned on. Snowdrops burst through the undergrowth around Strawberry Fields, where Randy, the dobro player, now played early Beetles on his guitar. It was nice to see a friend.
Making my way down the path, past hellebore galore, patches of violets and fat magnolia buds 3 inches tall, I heard the 5-piece jazz combo across the road from Daniel Webster. The dog roses were leafing out; pale impatiens hugged the ground. More magnolias, these in full sun, were clothed in blossoms.
Bethesda Fountain, center stage, beckoned. “Welcome back, sir,” said the hot dog man when I bought a bottle of water.
“Hey, you’re back,” said Carole, greeting me as I sat by the fountain and set up my solar-powered hula dolls. Carole, with camera, is a regular at the fountain, which is how I got to know her. “The place is hopping today. You’ll do great.”
Tuning up — always tuning — I chatted with a young couple from Cherry Hill. Soon they were on their feet, paper leis around their necks, doing the hula to “The Hukilau Song.” She gave me a dollar; he gave me two.
I started my set, as usual, with “Making Love Ukulele Style,” and moved through my play list, successfully remembering, for the most part, all the chords and lyrics. Two young women stopped to listen.
“Have you got time for a hula today?”
No, they didn’t, until I picked up a lei and dangled it in front of them. One of the girls came forward to dance, the other followed. The follower lived in the city; her friend was visiting from Austin. They dropped a buck and change.
A man who had been sitting at the fountain to my right gave me $2, as did an English couple walking by. A large group of teenagers from the UK spread out on the benches to my right. After a few tunes they came up to me, singly or in pairs, some to dance, some to investigate my solar-powered hula dolls, each making a little donation before returning to the group.
Two little girls shyly approached, their mom proudly watching.
“Would you like to hula?” They nodded, and I put a lei around their necks. The older girl, who was about 5, quickly got the hang of it, then began choreographing her little sister. By the time I started the second verse of “The Hukilau Song,” the girls were moving in unison, step to the right, step to the left, arms waving, fingers aflutter. Their mom, who was also English, gave me a fiver.
As well as I remembered chords and lyrics, I couldn’t remember my playlist. There were songs, I was sure, I hadn’t played yet, but what? After more than an hour, as I looked around at the lake, the sky, the pennants in the wind and the azaleas lining the path to the boathouse, I saw the willows on the shore, leaves turning from yellow to green. Of course, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” which begins, “Evening shades are creeping, willow trees are weeping…”
A family from Belarus danced the hula. A couple from Queens, soon to be married, did too. During my final number, “Little Grass Shack,” a sixty-something couple from western Canada stopped to chat. He tossed 2 singles in my case, bringing the day’s take to $27.32, a hefty sum marking an auspicious start to the season.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style, The Hukilau Song, Tiptoe through the Tulips
