Sometimes the sheer convenience of the Internet can be something we take for granted. Case in point: The other day, I found myself playing Bob Dylan’s “Lilly, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” on the ukulele.
I’d gotten a tenor ukulele two or three years ago with the idea that it might provide a catalyst for getting back into music. I started playing the guitar when I was in the Air Force back in the early 1970s, and played for about 20 years. The last few years of that, I felt that my playing had reached a plateau, my interest began to wane, and I eventually stopped altogether.
Then right around the time I turned 40, I was riding my bicycle in Schenley Park, when I was broadsided by a motorcycle. In addition to my other injuries, I shattered my right wrist. A couple of months after I got the cast off, I came across my guitar at the top of the hall closet, and I thought I’d give it a go. Not only had I lost my flexibility from not having played for a number of years, but the pain in my wrist was unbearable. I couldn’t even make a bar chord.
I assumed that my playing days were over, and put the guitar away more or less permanently.
Then, back, oh, ten years ago, or so, I’d read that ex-Beatle George Harrison had become a ukulele enthusiast. He’d really been captivated by the instrument, and even Eric Clapton remarked that when he’d go over to George’s house, “after dinner the ukuleles would come out”, and they would sit around and play.
George Harrison and Eric Clapton sitting around playing ukuleles is something I would pay good money to see.
Then in 2001, George lost his long battle with cancer. On the first anniversary of his death, Clapton organized “The Concert for George”, a monumental concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Eric gathered all of George’s friends (Jeff Lynne, Billy Preston, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Albert Lee, Sam Brown, and, of course, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, among others) and they spent the evening playing George’s music. The concert also began with a composition written especially for the event by Ravi Shankar, and conducted by his daughter.
The concert is available on DVD, and if you have any connection with The Beatles whatsoever, it’s mandatory viewing.
Anyway, well into the concert, Paul McCartney comes out with a ukulele, and speaks of George’s love for the instrument, and starts playing “Something” on the uke. Later, Sam Brown closed the concert with “I’ll See You in my Dreams”, also on the uke.
This was all pretty amazing stuff, and it got me to thinking about the ukulele. I thought that it might be easy enough to play that my injuries of so long ago wouldn’t make any difference.
I’d actually had a cheap soprano uke when I was in the Air Force, so I was not entirely unfamiliar with the instrument. But it was a real cheapo-cheapo, it was impossible to keep in tune, and I eventually traded it to a friend for a pre-amp for my turntable (believe me, I got the better end of that bargain).
I live in the Swisshelm Park section of Pittsburgh, which is a tiny enclave of the city almost wholly surrounded by Frick Park. The part that isn’t surrounded by the park borders on Swissvale.
Swissvale Music is one of the last great music stores in the Pittsburgh area, especially since Voklweins and Hollowood’s both closed back in the early ‘90s. So, I had a really great music store a stone’s throw away from my home, and I thought I’d take advantage of it.
It had been years since I’d been in a music store, and I made a bee-line for the acoustic guitars. I’d had only one really good guitar in my life, an Epiphone, made back in the days when the brand name still meant quality. I’d eventually sold that sometime back in the “Shadyside years”, when I needed some cash. I had a lesser guitar that I kept, and which I still have today, but I always regretted letting that Epiphone go.
I had to stop and remind myself that I wasn’t in the store for a guitar, and so I started looking for the ukuleles. They had a couple of mandolins, but no ukes.
When I asked the clerk, he said the didn’t stock them because there wasn’t much call for them, but they could order any instrument you can think of. So we started going through the catalogs.
I’d pretty much made up my mind that I didn’t want a soprano ukulele, that little thing on which Tiny Tim played “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”, and subsequently sent an entire generation of ukulele players into the underground. I wanted a tenor ukulele, which is slightly larger and has a richer tone. Lanikai, a Hawaiian company (no surprise there), is still one of the best ukulele makers there is, and I finally settled on one. Paid good money for it, too.
When it arrived and I went to pick it up, all the guys who worked at Swissvale Music were there and were very excited. The uke had arrived unstrung, and so they had strung it up and tuned it, and I guess everyone had been playing that afternoon … they hated to see it go, and one of them said he was going to order one for himself.
When I got it home, I found out what they were all so excited about. It really is a fun instrument to play. And since this was actually a high quality instrument, I found that it kept in tune all the way up the neck. I had no trouble playing it at all. It was really well made, too, with a satin finish and stained a beautiful light chocolate brown. It could well be the finest instrument I’ve ever owned. A uke. Go figure.
And, well, now we’re back to where I started this rambling piece. I was able to get all the music I wanted for the uke on the Internet. Chord charts, sheet music, books on playing and theory (“ukulele theory”, now that’s a specialty for you), as well as interest groups where you can hook up with other uke nuts.
“Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”, is a simple 3-chord tune, and I had it worked out in no time, but it has 16 verses (including one Dylan doesn’t sing on the recording, of which I was unaware). I usually start out OK, but around the 4th verse, I start to bog down. The lyrics weren’t printed on the album, and I don’t think I have to tell anyone who is familiar with Bob Dylan that sometimes the words get “garbled”. The song really lent itself perfectly to the uke, and I was determined to get the lyrics.
Again, our comparatively new friend, the Internet comes to the rescue. I Googled, “Lilly, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts lyrics”, and there they were, all 16 verses. A quick CTRL-P, and they were coming out of my printer.
So, there you are. The Internet is something we take for granted, by way of a long, rambling tale about music.
Of course, the postscript is even better. As I was working out songs on the uke that I used to play many years ago on the guitar, I got the guitar out. I needed to remember the chord changes so I could transpose them to the other instrument. I guess I’d been playing the guitar for about an hour when I realized that my wrist wasn’t bothering me. I was rusty as hell, and very inflexible, but I was playing the guitar and my wrist was fine.
Since that time, I also picked up a used 12-string guitar at a pawn shop in Braddock (a concept that probably sends chills up and down the spine of anyone who is familiar with Braddock, but it’s cool, it was in the daytime). The 12-string is, ironically, an Epiphone, and now I have two guitars and a ukulele. I’d still like to get a really good guitar some day, and with Swissvale Music so handy, that may just happen.
OK, I’m done …
