The Ukulele Thread  | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Yaaay.I have a bunch of reasons for getting and learning a ukulele, not all of them Beatles-related:

• I’m old enough to remember Tiny Tim (he appears on a late Beatles Christmas Record playing Nowhere Man , so that’s on the list), and ukuleles have thus floated through my brain but until now I hadn’t acted upon it.
• Tonight You Belong To Me, which, if you’ve ever seen Steve Martin’s The Jerk, is a stunning aside in a very funny movie, and of course features Steve on a ukulele. This song won’t leave me alone, and I have to play it. According to this it’s actually tuned down for the song, but the pdf is the best version I can find.
• There was an obscure Australian jazz guy called Graeme Bell who used to bring his jazz band to schools in the 70’s and play dixie at them, and also perform for the grownups later on, and this indeed happened to me at school and my dad who’s a jazz fan went to see him and brought back this album which is now impossible to find. I’ve grown up remembering songs from that album, the best memory is of Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jelly Roll by Clarence Williams and it’s a perfect uke song, as is most dixie. So that’s also a priority! There are heaps of versions of this song, if you know your chord progressions, it’s a doddle.

There’s a lot of Beatles/solo Beatles uke tab out there too, for instance this page has tons of them.

Tom Petty quoted from “George Harrison : Living In The Material World “:

“He came in with two ukuleles and gave me one. ‘You gotta play this thing, it’s great! Let’s jam.’ I have no idea how to play a ukulele. ‘Oh, it’s no problem, I’ll show you.’ So we spent the rest of the day playing ukuleles, strolling around the yard. My wrist hurt the next day. But he taught me how to play it, and a lot of the chord formations. When he was going I walked out to the car and he said, ‘Well, wait… I want to leave some ukuleles here.’ He’d already given me one, so I said, ‘Well, I’ve got this.’ ‘No, we may need more!’ He opened his trunk and he had a lot of ukulele in there, and I think he left four at my house. He said, ‘Well, you never know when we might need them, because not everybody carries one around.'”

That’s such a great George quote haha “we may need more!”. I’m already considering more ukes, but there’s a good reason: tuning. There are four standard tunings for the uke (not counting the baritone uke which is tuned like a guitar), so depending on what you need, it makes sense to have a uke tuned in one of them. I’m going to stick with a standard tuned uke for now, but I may get a 2nd uke and use the dropped-G tunng on that.

George had such enthusiasm for things and couldn’t wait to share them with his friends. Here’s another uke site (in Glastonbury!), which has helpful audio files along with them, and an even better (in F) version of You Belong To Me, as well as a bunch of good songs to practice on.

pepperland said
Is slide ukulele a thing?

I don’t see why not, funny you say so because I was thinking of doing just that to see how it sounds. Also, banjolele’s are definitely a thing, very Formby. They’re not cheap though, particularly not in kangaroo dollars 🙁

So of course I’ve been looking at nothing but ukuleles online, and I decided to find out what ukes were played by Macca and Joe Brown in the Concert For George. Paul’s was a gift from George and a mighty mighty gift. It’s a 1920’s Gibson tenor uke, here’s a description of a similar one. I’d be terrified to even pick one up!

Joe Brown’s is of course a soprano uke and probably of similar vintage given the style of headstock, but I can’t make out the brand and searching the internet is hopeless, you will either just find Concert for George refs or his own signature brand. So any ideas?

I’m thinking of getting a tenor at some point, I quite like the way they sound (NOT just Paul’s! I’ve been listening to a few audio grabs).

There are an amazing amount of resources for ukes wherever you live, I keep finding new Australian ones, and have a couple of good sites for when I’m ready for the 2nd uke! Apparently acacia is a terrific substitute for koa and there’s a couple of local distributors for the Pili Koko brand, which I’m fairly settled on as a good one for a tenor.

Sally the Ukelele update: Sally is on her way! Should get to Melbourne by tomorrow morning and me by midday hopefully!

meanmistermustard said
Is Sally long and tall?

No, she’s short and sweet, and has Sally drawn on her and a bunch of flowers! I got an Aquila Red low-G string today so I can try low-G tuning which might sound interesting on a soprano uke, especially for non-jazz/standard/dixie kinds of songs.

Also, I got the Graeme Bell thing wrong. Turns out it was a guy called Ray Price and he put out a record called Jazz Party No 1 and that’s the album my dad has. Of course Price and half his Quintet played in bands with Bell anyway so no wonder I mixed them up, Dad has Graeme Bell records too. I could buy an LP on ebay but I don’t have a turntable and I’d prefer a digitized copy anyway. I’ve been corresponding with a nice old jazz guy in the UK and he sent me several arrangements of Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jelly Roll and there are verses that I’ve not only never heard, but I can’t find any version that uses them!

Wow @Joe, that’s different, cool shape too! I didn’t think it was possible to get a smaller uke! I think I already have UAS, which is going to be difficult to resist when I have to buy a synth as well.