Posts Tagged ‘Little Coquette’

  1. The Last Saturday in March

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    March 31, 2019 by admin

    I was on my way to get a haircut on Saturday, when, turning down Broadway, with the sun on my face, I decided to make an impromptu debut at Bethesda Fountain.  It was just 60 degrees.  Unshorn, I returned home and retrieved my outside ukulele, a Lanikai tenor with low-G tuning.  The low-G string was the one I’d replaced on the fly at the end of the 2018 season; I restrung it more carefully, then tuned the uke down a halftone, to F-sharp, which gives my voice maximum range.

    At the subway station, I tipped the lounge singer a buck for good luck.

    The bulbs around the Women’s Gate to Central Park, at 72nd St., had started to emerge:  purple croci, pink and white chionodoxa, miniature daffodils.  At the Image Mosaic, mounds of snowdrops bloomed behind the benches, while farther down the path, hellabores turned their faces to the ground in glorious humility.  Yellow forsythia hinted at so much more to come, and the rose branches, just green, would soon be covered in red growth.

    The jazz combo played across from Daniel Webster; the acrobats on the mall were highly amped.  Bethesda Fountain was teeming with tourists, and center stage was mine.

    I started slowly through my repertoire.  It had been months since I’d played some of these songs.  A young man started me off with a dollar.

    Three generations of Indian women stopped to listen.  “Have you got time for a hula today?”  The youngest, a 5-year-old named Samantha, stepped forward.  Glancing over her shoulder at my solar powered hula girl, she imitated the swinging hips and jerky arm movements.  At the end of the dance she ran back to her mom, who rewarded me with a ten-spot.

    A man walking by dropped a single.  Two late teens came running.  “We’ve been waiting for you since last year,” one said, tossing in a buck.  “Have you got time for a hula?” said the other.

    “You even know my shtick.  So,” I said, “have you got time?”

    “We’re big fans, man, we waited all winter, and now we have to go.” They walked away laughing.

    Three teenaged girls from Connecticut danced a decorous hula and gave me a fiver.  I got another fiver from a man who’d been listening from the bench.  A tall, bearded 30-something recorded “Little Coquette,” dug into his pocket and tossed me a quarter.  Toward the end of my set 4 young women from England danced a raucous hula; they gave me $2.

    It was my first day of busking in 2019, my 13th year as Mr. Ukulele.  I’d kicked off the season with a very respectable $25.25, just about the price of a haircut.

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