Most of the obituaries of Isaac Hayes focus on the three S’s: Scientology, Shaft and South Park. But his biggest contribution was being half of the best song writing duo (along with David Porter) at the greatest record label of all time (Stax). He wrote the most underrated song in history The Soul Children’s The Sweeter He Is and the legendary Soul Man as recorded by Sam and Dave. With Hayes’s death, Sam Moore of Sam and Dave is one of the few remaining soul legends.
Soul Man works very well on the ukulele – the syncopated rhythms certainly help – but there are a lot of parts to it, so pay attention.
The intro goes like this:
Then it’s into the main riff.
The basic chords for the chorus are just G and F. The brass break is:
But you could play it strummed like this:
The high guitar part can be played like this:
And the low guitar part at the end of the chorus:
For the ‘Grab the rope…’ section, the chords are Eb – Bb – C – C# – Eb. That provides a key change, so now you have to play the intro one fret higher:
It’s seems I’m a little late writing about Foreign Loren, they split up at the end of April. Nevertheless, they made a bunch of excellent uke tunes that are well worth checking out.
With plenty of waltzes played on ukulele, accordion and trumpet, there was always a danger they’d end up sounding like Beirut. A danger, I’m happy to report, they haven’t bothered avoiding at all. They even covered Postcards from Italy. They might have been Beirut copyists, but they were very good Beirut copyists. Songs like Seaside, We Collide (which you can download on Foggy Ruins of Time) and Winter Coats are better than a few Beirut songs I could name.
How fantastic were those drummers at the start of the Opening Ceremony? It certainly topped a bunch of flag girls strolling around at the LA opening ceremony in 1984 (although no change in the commentators blabbering all over the music). But the LA opening ceremony did have the first performance of the Olympic Fanfare written by John Williams for the games.
Jeff had requested tab for the Olympic Anthem/Hymn and I gave it a go but couldn’t really get it to work on the uke. I don’t think it really has a strong enough tune. Which is something you certainly couldn’t say about the Olympic Fanfare. By the time of the games, Williams had plenty of practice making grand, instantly memorable tunes for films like Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones.
I’ve written up the first, and most recognizable, part of the tune. The trickiest part is the triplet notes. I started out trying a few triplet strums while blocking the other strings but couldn’t get it to work. I ended up picking with my index, middle and ring fingers in succession.
I was going to record an mp3 of this, but I’m far too busy watching the batmitten, so you’ll have to put up with a midi.
Look, Mum, I’m in the New York Times. I do feel a little slighted that they didn’t include a link to me (FMM and MUD got one), but now you can expect to see a big, “As Featured in the New York Times,” sticker every time I mention the National Anthems ebook*.
Anyhoo, you came for ukulele videos, and that’s what you’ll get. Particularly good this week are Max the Ukulele Punk Rocker with an original song, and Seeso and Jason Arimoto (together and apart).
There are quite a few interesting ukes for sale on eBay UK right now. Hank’s Guitar Shop has a bunch of interesting ukuleles including Martins, Kamakas, KoAlohas, Fleas and Flukes.
Mahalo have been making Gibson Flying V style ukes for a while and now they’ve moved on to Les Pauls. You can buy them in Cherry and Black .
Also on eBay UK is this Gibson which has been attacked with a drill, but might still be worth watching.
Still in the UK, but confusingly on ebay US, is this strange “Trad Jazz Special” plastic ukulele.
There seems to be even more photos of topless ukulele girls than usual this week, but the photo that really caught my attention was this photo of a German boy from 1866. As well as the distractions of the hat and thrown, that’s a very interesting instrument he has there.
Google have recently released their Wikipedia-killer, Google Knol. The idea, I think, is that one person writes the knol and others can come along and edit it. I gave it a test run and wrote one on ukulele history. I’ve left it fairly sparse, so feel free to add to it (and any inaccuracies you might find are there on purpose to get people involved, honest).
This song is way too much fun. I’ve got a sore strumming finger after playing along with this on too hard and too long. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Shorty Long’s Pops Bayless and Bob Guz are ukulele legends.
I couldn’t find Shorty Long’s version streaming anywhere. You can listen to a snippet here
or listen to this inferior version in another key here. But I’d suggest you buy it as it’s well worth 99c of anyone’s money.
Vipermad is made up of the same chord progression played in three different keys: C, F and Bb. This set of chords crop up all the time in these hokum type songs. It’s well worth setting them to memory. I’m a little ashamed at how long it took me to get the chords for the Bb section. I knew the other sets of by heart, but I don’t remember ever playing these in Bb before. They work well on the uke though.
I admit it, I’m overexcited about the Olympics starting. I’m not much of a sports fan, but the Olympics gets me hooked every time. Which is why I took a little time out from writing the blues ebook (that I’ve promised loads of people is coming but is really big and involved) to have a bit of fun arranging various national anthems for the uke and putting them in an ebook.
I’ve written up eight anthems chosen by the countries that visit Uke Hunt the most: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the UK, the USA plus Russia (for the benefit of my many hundred Communist readers).
I’ve kept the arrangements as simple as I could to make sure they’re accessible. If you’re fairly new to fingerpicking, they’re a good place to start. To give you an idea of the difficulty level, here’s my arrangement of Scotland the Brave:
What you get: A zip file containing a pdf file with all the tabs and notes for each anthem, individual pdfs of the tab for each tune, mp3s of all the anthems. Once you’ve completed your payment, you’ll be taken to the download page where you can get it all.
I think this is the fastest turnaround from first listen to post up since FotC’s Mermaids. It’s a fantastic song (and top notch video). A fact that wasn’t lost on the people of class and good taste who read the blog and pummelled me with chord requests. Way ahead of you guys.
There wasn’t enough room to write Asus4add9 all over the place. So wherever you see A49 use 4200. There’s also the A(alt) chord (or Aa). It’s just a plain A chord but I’ve called it that to distinguish it from the more common A chord shape.
Anyone who saw the clips from the UKEit Festival will know that Italy has a very healthy ukulele scene going on right now and it’s in no small part due to, radio and TV stars, Cappa & Drago. With their UKEit site, they’ve set out to, “create an original Italian ukulele scene, starting with those who have already mastered the instrument, working in the live scene and making records, as well as welcoming other artists from all sorts of musical backgrounds to experiment on the four strings.” And if the festival wasn’t enough to convince you they’ve really got something going on, then the CD UKEit Volume Uno should do they trick.
There’s a great variety of styles on the CD. Along with more traditional ukulele fare, there’s hip hop uke from Frankie Hi-NRG MC and Scampaforce sounding like Daft Punk’s long lost ukulele song. Other tandout tracks include Thomas Blackthorne’s cover of Tom Waits’s I Don’t Want To Grow Up (which, like all the tracks on the album, is sung in Italian), Cappo & Drago’s Paroxetina 20mg and
Enrico Farnedi’s Lena (which you can hear on his MySpace).
But highlight of the album is the incredible voice of Musica Nuda’s Petra Magoni covering Un Calpo Al Cuore (with Gaetano Cappa on uke duties) which, I should point out, isn’t anywhere near as far out as the performance in that video but just as wonderfully melodramatic.
