Posts Tagged ‘All of Me’
-
What’s a Well-Tuned Ukulele Worth?
0September 13, 2017 by admin
Behind the northern benches at the entrance to the park, lantana and celosia are having a second blooming. The wood anemone derby, in which the two plants compete for the number of open flowers, is tied at 3. The south-facing catalpa pods, dangling like string beans, are reddening into ripeness.
As I set up at Bethesda Fountain, the cowboy introduced himself as Colin. I gave him my card.
My first dancers were a young Bulgarian couple, who seemed delighted to be asked to hula. They put a dollar in my case as I turned to entice a toddler in a straw hat with my baby lei. He threw it on the ground, at which time his parents led him away.
Another little boy seemed inclined to dance. His mom gave him a dollar for me. He dropped it in my case, then grabbed a lei and ran back to his mom. He put on the lei and started to walk away. I decided not to run after him; as it turned out, his mom walked the lei back to me.
One of the snake boys came down from the terrace in front of the arcade. He started hustling all around me. After collecting some money for photos with the snake, he approached me. “How about some Beatle songs?” he said.
“How about you take your snake back where you came from,” I said. “I’m working here.”
A family from Orlando stopped to let their little girl dance. “I know how to hula,” she said. “We were just in Hawaii. The boys do this,” she waved her arms to the left, “and the girls do this,” waving her arms to the right.
“Since your brother won’t dance,” I said, “you’ll have to dance both parts.”
After the dance, her dad and I discussed Hurricane Irma. “That’s why we’re here,” he told me, folding up a fiver and laying it in my case.
Two young men, with back packs and hiking boots, slowed to study my solar-powered hula girls. One of them bent down to get a closer look. When he got up, he gave me a buck.
A couple from the bench, having finished their lunch, also chipped in a buck.
A large man with a crew cut waited for me to finish “All of Me.” His name was Carl and he engaged me in a wide-ranging conversation about ukes. “Do you play?”
“A little,” he said. I offered him my uke and he proceeded to tune it before plucking out a ditty. He handed it back and told me he ran a music school. “I’ll be seeing a lot of you,” he said. “I come to the park a lot. Play me a tune.”
I played 8 bars of “I Wonder Where My Hula Girl Has Gone,” then switched to “Making Love Ukulele Style.” “That was written by Dean Martin,” I told him.
“He did lots of interesting musical things,” Carl told me, then he walked away. He didn’t give me any money, but he’d tuned my uke perfectly; it sounded better than it had all summer.
After Carl, no one else came by. I exited the park with $10 in my pocket, and a well-tuned uke on my back.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: All of Me, I Wonder Where My Little Hula Girl Has Gone, Making Love Ukulele Style
-
November 4, Really
0November 5, 2015 by admin
The post-marathon park seemed out of season. Annuals were torn up; past peak, many trees were bare. Despite the 70 degree temperature, people were wrapped in scarves and sweaters. The cowboy was in his proper place in the northwest corner of the plaza, allowing me the uncontested center stage.
An Australian family started me off. One daughter wanted to hula, the other hung back to watch. After a verse of “The Hukilau Song” I invited the second daughter to reconsider, and soon the sisters were dancing in tandem, clomp-clomp right, clomp-clomp left. Dad got the picture, and I got a fiver.
A woman with a huge camera gave me a dollar and asked for a photo. Before she could get me in focus, a man with an equally huge camera took his photo from another angle.
An old man lurked, watching and listening first from the bench, then from the lip of the fountain, then back at the bench. After a half dozen songs, he approached with a dollar and asked, “Who besides you and me has ever heard of these old songs? ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips,’ ‘All of Me,’ ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,’ ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me.’ Great job,” he added, returning to the bench to hear some more.
Mothers with small children took advantage of the warm weather. Two moms, with 3 kids between them, let them run freely, which eventually led them to me. I folded the leis in half so they would not trip over them. The 4 year old girl danced. The 2 year old boy, alert to the fact that people were watching, stood stock still, not wanting to call any more attention to himself. The third child clung to his mom’s leg. The dancers were each given a dollar for me.
While all this was going on, Marcel and Maggie came down the path and into the plaza. A 70-something woman, introduced as Marcel’s wife and Maggie’s mom, told me how cute it was to see little kids dance, and how much Maggie enjoyed the ukulele.
As a woman walked by, our eyes met just as I got to the lyric in “Sunday,” “…so sweet, the moment I fell for you.” She doubled back and dropped some change in my case. “You got me,” she said.
A small girl broke away from a group photograph at the fountain and handed me a dollar. Two women from the bench, an 80-something and a 60-something, who had been chatting through my performance, approached with a dollar too.
Counting my take at the end of the session, $12.35, I sent a silent prayer of Aloha into the warm blue sky. What’s weird is that this unseasonably warm weather is likely to reprise tomorrow, as am I.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: All of Me, I Can't Give You Anything But Love, My Baby Just Cares for Me, Sunday, The Hukilau Song, Tiptoe through the Tulips
-
Location, Location, Location
0September 2, 2015 by admin
On the first day of September, for some inexplicable reason, the cowboy set up on the opposite side of the fountain. I immediately claimed center stage. And just to prove, once again, that in matters of real estate location is everything, I made $17, multiples of August’s paltry daily take, in fact, the best since mid-June.
A man with a backpack started me off, then a tween from Toronto danced for her mom. Three Spanish beauties romped around, waving their arms above their heads, as if they were palm trees in the breeze. An Australian man, whom I mistook for English, feigned insult, yet still dumped more than a dollar in change in my case.
A 60-something lady gave me money. I was playing “My Baby Just Cares for Me.” “Don’t go yet,” I said. “I wrote a second verse.” At the final chord, she clapped twice, turned and headed for the stairs.
A Brazilian man heard me playing “All of Me,” and wanted to sing it with me. “Can you play it in D?”
“No,” I said. “Try this.” I played it in the only key I know, which is B, more or less. He sang beautifully, while I quietly filled in the English lyric when he stumbled. He was singing to his wife, who listened adoringly. He gave me $2, and went away complaining that the key was all wrong. I put the bills in my case, and noticed that someone had tossed in some change, including a Sacagawea dollar.
A lady from St. Louis put a dollar in my case, saying, “Can I ask you a question? My friend and I think you’re retired from Wall St. and just doing this for a lark.”
“You and your friend pretty much nailed it,” I said. “I am retired, this is a lark, and my office was downtown, but I didn’t work for a Wall St. firm, Wall St. firms were my clients.”
“You were a lawyer?” She added, “I’m so nosey.”
“I was a salesman, of technology services.”
After talking about St. Louis for a while, she went back to her friend on the bench by the water, their curiosity satisfied.
A bridal party showed up at the fountain while I was packing up. The photographer posed the couple near me. Seated behind my case, I picked up my uke and launched into “The Hawaiian Wedding Song.” The photographer smiled, but otherwise the picture-taking went on as if I weren’t there. After the coda, “I do/love you/with all my heart,” I put my uke away. The bridal party moved off. Last to leave were a pair of parents.
“You probably thought I was going to stiff you,” said the man, putting 4 quarters in my hand.
“You must be the father of the bride.” He nodded. “If you want to stiff me, it would be okay. I understand. You’ve probably been reaching into your pocket all day.”
“No, no, you’re the least of it,” he said. “And besides, you sang beautifully.”
Category Uncategorized | Tags: All of Me, My Baby Just Cares for Me, The Hawaiian Wedding Song
