Posts Tagged ‘Fit as a Fiddle’
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Two in a Row
0March 11, 2016 by admin
On the Monday after the big storm in January, feeling something like a caged tiger, I set out for the gym, leaped over a snow pile at the corner, fell and broke my leg. I write this now to convey the sheer joy I felt yesterday, bound though I was by a walking boot and cane. Going out with my uke two days in a row approached bliss.
The park retained its overall earthen colors. The sky was mostly gray; warm, wet winds blew the occasional hole in the clouds to let in some sun. I saw more daffs than yesterday. The rose wood was greening, and when I looked hard I saw the nubs of growing tips. Except for the stray forsythia floret, nothing.
The guitar platoon at the Imagine Mosaic is back, if they ever left.
At the foot of the western staircase, where the acrobats work, 2 clown-like guitarists sang and danced to silly songs. They’d set up a cardboard bandstand reading Benny and Griff, and seemed ready to do their show all day. I assessed the situation for conflict. No amplification, no foul. “I play over there,” I told them, gesturing with my cane. They were very nice, they called me “sir.”
After I sang my openers, “Making Love Ukulele Style,” “Sunday,” “Fit as a Fiddle,” “I Saw Stars,” and “Ukulele Lady,” a man my age, who’d been sitting by the water to my left, came up and asked, “Surfboard accident?” He complimented my voice, gave me a dollar and encouraged me to keep up the good work.
A slim, beautiful black woman, close-cropped hair, flowing clothes and bare arms hula-ed toward the benches with her male companion. I encouraged her to put on a lei and do a proper hula, and she did. We went through both verses of “The Hukilau Song,” by which time she’d drawn a crowd. Even her friend was taking pictures. She gave me back the lei and returned to the bench.
An older Asian woman stepped forward and put a dollar in my case. She had been in the crowd and appreciated the expressive beauty of the hula.
The next dancer was a Dallas girl of 7 or 8, who pranced around quite freely while her mother got it on video. Then 3 more Texans, from a teenage tour from El Paso, gave their rendition of the hula. Quite a bit of banter and dollars were exchanged, as their classmates wanted in on what was happening. “You’re my second group from Texas today,” I told them. “Is this Texas in New York Week?”
“It’s a big state,” I was told.
With my final song, “Little Grass Shack,” I sat down to count the day’s haul, $12, then hoisted myself to my feet and started home. At the foot of the stairs, Benny and Griff were still at it.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Benny and Griff, Fit as a Fiddle, I Saw Stars, Imagine Mosaic, Little Grass Shack, Making Love Ukulele Style, Sunday, The Hukilau Song, Ukulele Lady
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Last Licks
0November 17, 2015 by admin
Giant white snowflakes have been hung over Columbus Ave. Along Central Park West, they’ve set up the aluminum grandstand 7 tiers high for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Inside the park, the crowds are thin, despite the 65 degree weather. The hydrangea behind the benches has turned wine red. On the almost leafless rose bushes, a few pink petals have opened wide, as if asking the sun for a handout; orange hips swell on the lower branches.
At the Imagine Mosaic, the homeless guitarist led the crowd in “Imagine,” encouraging the multi-part harmony with shouts of “lovely, beautiful” between line breaks. Fuzzy buds have lengthened on the tips of magnolia branches. Through the bare trees, I could see the tops of the tall buildings of Mount Sinai Hospital on upper Fifth Ave. In the arcade, the Boyd Family Singers have expanded their repertoire of sacred music to include a few secular Christmas carols.
Andrew, the young guitarist, was packing up when I got to center stage. “I like these European crowds,” he told me. “They drop a five where New Yorkers drop singles.”
A 40-something man gave me a dollar and asked if he could take a picture. “Do you play ‘Ukulele Lady’?” he asked. I told him I’d be getting to it soon. Not soon enough, I suppose, because he wandered away.
A guy and his gal from Brooklyn gave me a fiver and said, “Ok, entertain us.” I had just finished “Fit as a Fiddle,” and launched into “I Saw Stars.” The girlfriend bopped along to the beat, but refused to put on a lei. “How much to come out in a rowboat and serenade us?”
I hesitated. “150 bucks,” I told him, certain that at that rate I would keep my feet dry.
“No, don’t you get it?” he insisted. “You’re missing a great opportunity. People will row up to you from every direction to give you money.”
After haranguing me for a while longer, off they wandered to the boathouse. A man wanted to know if I would stand for a picture with his girlfriend. I put a lei around her neck for the shot. She would not hula.
A little girl came by and wanted to dance. “If it’s ok with your mom,” I said. It was. The girl was at a loss as to what to do, so I put a lei around her mom’s neck and told the girl to follow. It was a charming scene, recorded by several passers-by. Two women, who had been sitting on the bench for a while came by with a dollar.
The first photographer came back. “Thanks for playing ‘Ukulele Lady’,” he said. Marcel walked by with Maggie the dog to say hello, marvel at the weather and wish me a pleasant winter. The couple from Brooklyn pulled their rowboat up to the steps leading from the lake to the fountain area. They hailed me.
“Yo, Brooklyn,” I shouted to them.
At the end of my set, a thirty-something man got up from the bench and tossed a fiver in my case. “I gotta tell you,” he told me, “you’re the most talented man in Central Park.”
With his $5, my total came to $15, as good as any day in the summer, let alone a week before Thanksgiving.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Fit as a Fiddle, I Saw Stars, Imagine, Ukulele Lady
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Rosh Ha-Hula
0September 15, 2015 by admin
After a week away from the park, I returned at the change of season. The weather was in the mid-70’s with cool gusts of wind. The sky was cloudless. The cowboy was back near my spot at the fountain, so I continued to the maple, setting up where I could easily move into the sun.
Shortly after I started my set, a family with 4 teen-aged girls walked by. Dad pulled out his wallet and gave a dollar to the eldest girl for me. She would not dance, nor would any of her sisters, whom I invited in turn.
A 40-something man, walking twin terriers, waited across the path, eager to tell me that he was on his way to meet his friend, who had colluded with one of the portrait artists on a marriage proposal scheme. Having given the artist a picture beforehand, his friend would bring his girlfriend to the park to sit for the artist, whose final product would include, voila, a diamond ring. He rushed off so excited, he almost forgot to give me a dollar. After 10-15 minutes I saw him again, walking back the other way. I stopped what I was singing and switched to “The Hawaiian Wedding Song.”
While singing “Fit as a Fiddle,” when I came to the lyric, “…how the church bells will be ringing/with a hey nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha,” a young couple stopped in their tracks. It turned out the woman’s name was Nonny; there was laughter and handshakes all around, then off they walked.
A woman in a head scarf seemed to like “My Baby Just Cares for Me.” She took a long video, then counted out 4 quarters. A woman with a screaming child in her arms walked by, just as I was deciding what to sing next. It was “Get Out and Get Under the Moon,” a cinch to make a child smile. Mom peeked over her shoulder at her happy daughter, smiled at me. All was well.
A tall man dressed in his high holiday best took out his wallet and gave me a dollar. His wife, on his arm, beamed up at him approvingly. He had started the new year with a mitzvah.
A couple of men and women, with 5-6 kids, were picnicking behind me, on the other side of the fence. They’d finished their lunch and some of the kids got up to run. One boy, about 10, found a break in the fence and was throwing his body against it until he could squeeze through.
“You want to hula?”
“Does it cost anything?”
“Not a thing.”
Soon his brothers and sisters were squeezing through the fence to hula too. I got them lei-ed and lined up, when the eldest sister, 15 or so, egged on by the adults, got up off the blanket and wriggled through the fence. She already knew how to hula, so I instructed all the others to follow her to the hukilau. At least 2 singles found their way into my case, along with an unknown quantity of change.
Two preteens on scooters raced by, dismounted, and prevailed on the adult in charge to let them hula. They pushed and giggled their way through both verses of “The Hukilau Song.” Each gave me a dollar and hopped back on her scooter. “That was fun.”
There was close to $13 in my case when a woman and her husband passed by, stopped, walked back and asked if mine was a tenor uke. She was a 1st grade teacher, living on the west side, who wanted an instrument to play in her class, so the kids could sing along. She thought the ukulele might be the answer. I assured her, while her husband put a dollar in my case and pulled her away, it surely was.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Fit as a Fiddle, Get Out and Get Under the Moon, My Baby Just Cares for Me, The Hawaiian Wedding Song, The Hukilau Song
