UKEBOX

2011-11-29T13:07:00.000-08:00

Fleeting Designs is a special thank you to all the good people (and a couple of scoundrels) who helped me back on my feet after all my instruments were stolen this past spring. I had nothing new to offer them in gratitude, but I went to my stalled recordings bin to see if I could make an acceptable offering by polishing them up. A few of the tracks feature the musical talents of other instrumentalists, but it's mostly me arranging an accompaniment for myself and playing the tune on ukulele, at home, with no one waiting for it, and no one to please but myself.

I assumed it would take me couple of weeks.

I have been in love for years with the painting I used for the graphics. It was painted by Allegra Thompson, and it is used here with her kind permission. I marvel at the complexity of the moment she committed to the canvas.

I'm spending the day writing up the notes on these nineteen tunes. Expect them here by morning.

2010-08-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

This video has been online for months, and after all this time I still want to watch it. Did I mention I spent my high school era afternoons cutting class and hiding out in the San Mateo Public Library? I kept track of every librarian working in the place, and yes, I had a favorite. Most of them suspected nothing. I know viewing this video returns me to that time in my youth. Nerds rule, especially in this video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uzUh1VT98

2010-01-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday Kurt and I were trying to think of things to play, not as yet shot and uploaded to YouTube by Pip. Pip has been at it for a long time and everything we think of to play is already up. So Kurt strated playing Good Vibrations and I told him to postpone it until Pip got back. We didn't have a chance to talk about it at all and I'm not sure how much of it we wrecked. But it sounds kind of good to me, stumbles and all. I'll try to figure out how to embed this video. I forgot how.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8VCbW1ryls

2009-05-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

Where have I been? I haven't been here on my very own blog much at all. There's a weird little party going on over at Facebook, and the back and forth here can't touch it.

A few months back I decided to get up every morning and record a ukulele instrumental before moving on to my daily chores, and I posted each one on Facebook as soon as I was done. It was nice to get feedback on it. (You know the "post a comment" links on each entry here? Nobody pays them much mind at all.)

Well, if you ever get out Facebook way, look me up. It's a pretty good place to shoot the breeze. I'll come back here now and then and leave some more bread crumbs.

I don't do it often, but this time, I goofed around with the young people loops a little. The tune, Siboney, is a Cuban classic by Ernesto Lecuona.

2009-05-02T07:24:00.000-07:00

I was halfway through my two week hell of untreated sleep apnea when we did this shoot. Pip says he has a handful of instrumentals from this shoot waiting in the can for his attention.

2009-02-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

BARACK OBAMA - They're Just Not That Into You!

Like Rachel Maddow said, "Dude, you could do so much better..."

2008-11-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

I am nearly ready to admit that I am in the tank for Obama. I always hated that term, because it implied I was no longer paying attention, but I'm confronted by the evidence of my unreachable gone-ness. I just watched a five minute raw video of Barack Obama trying to get from one end of a Chicago lunch joint to the other, and I know I'm going to watch it again. Next time someone tells me I need my head checked, I'm going to give it more consideration.

While watching it all I could think of was this ad, which shows in our market all the time.

2008-11-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

Wonkette ran a quickie about their blog's session with the non-Freudian analyst at typealyzer.com. I had to find out what it thought of my little blog. Ready?

The analysis indicates that the author of http://ukebox.blogspot.com is of the type:
ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Does this explain how crappy I am at updating regularly?

2008-10-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

2008-10-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

I hoped this would be funny, but I didn't expect to start crying. This sums up the whole last eight years for me.

2008-08-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

I start getting proud of my music and I see stuff like this and get back to work.

2008-08-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry so long since the last entry. I'm hunkered down with production on my new record, UKEBOX EXOTICA these days, and a few projects for clients. But Pip R. Lagenta, whose YouTube videos of raccoons and skunks in his kitchen have been embedded here, came down to Nabolom Bakery yesterday to catch some of our music in his magic box.

Kurt Stevenson on nylon string guitar picks out the Patsy Cline hit "Crazy" (4:50) from Willie Nelson's perfect pen. Later, on returning from our mid-point break, Don McClellan on dobro calls "Sand" (7:59). Don proves he knows his Jerry Byrd records, and I return the favor with a vocal as learned from Merv Griffin. Kurt gets back to the bandstand in time to take a spin with that melody, and Ed Johnson holds down the low end with his washing tub bass or "floor banjo." Finally I can't resist a tune Kurt taught me, "Sakuranbo" (2:36), from a Trio Los Panchos Lp.

If you're a glutton for punishment, Mister Lagenta has posted seven (!) of our songs there, including a couple in which Art Peterson of Those Darn Accordions makes a guest appearance. I hope you will let any fans of the electric ukulele know where to find these clips.

2008-05-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

GRACEFUL AS THE WAVES OF THE OCEAN
LOVELY HULA PAWS

On a box dot net server I have uploaded files of music recordings I've made. The links to my music you find on the pages of this web log are on that server. This morning I was at box, looking at the download activity for my posted files, and I wondered who all those people might be. The comment level for my posts is hardly a puddle, but some tunes there have been downloaded hundreds of times. I hope you, dear reader, will send up a flare as you surf on by, and let me know just a bit about who was interested enough to download the music. Nothing at all personal is intended.
-
Here's a YouTube of a young ocarina virtuoso who, apart from his recognizable expressivity, is entirely unknown to me. I admire this kind of finesse, although those cursed with perfect pitch may not wish to view the clip repeatedly.

I don't know the fellow, but I feel sure that were we to find ourselves together, strangers snowbound in an airport for a day, we would part with a wordless but deeply sympathetic understanding of each other and a couple hundred euros apiece in change. That's one ukulele player's reve du jour.

2008-05-02T09:13:00.001-07:00

In the mid-seventies I was heading into my senior year at high school. My last campus tormentor had graduated in June, and I was looking forward to a year of not flinching and hiding. I watched my schoolmates coming out of band practice with their horns and drum gear, and looked down at my ukulele without a case. The Aragon High School jazz band had no use for a ukulele.

I was thinking about stealing a new last name, and imagining a future in journalism that was shaped more by romantic ideas of Herman Mankiewicz and H. L. Mencken than by anything possible in 1975. I had written for the school paper and now my oldest friend from first grade and two friends of his and I were starting an independent paper through school clubs. It was probably the apex of my being full of myself. Belated apologies to all who knew me.

Into this reflective time of stormy youth came illumination from the heart and soul of Leonard Bernstein, whose first ballet score, the jazzy, slangy Fancy Free, had been rattling around my head for a whole year. My local public tv station, KQED, was showing THE UNANSWERED QUESTION: Six Talks At Harvard on Saturdays in the second half of summer. I was not the same kid after the first talk, Musical Phonology.

The series is still available in hardcover, VHS, and DVD. It still turns me on, even in four minute chunks. One of those is below via YouTube.

2008-04-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

Some have asked me about my "Lazy Bones" video posted at YouTube, wanting to know what I was thinking when I performed the tune in a recumbent pose. I am sure Perry Como would have seen nothing amiss in my approach. As evident in the clip above, he loves to bogey.

God bless Eugene Levy; here's hoping he's got a piece of the American Pie DVD action.

He sings pretty good. And Catherine O'Hara got her autoharp game on!

2008-04-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

David Julian Gray at NPR got in touch late last year to report that he found my CD weeks before and bought it online. He said he'd like to pass them around and see if anyone else there got enthusiastic about it. It's hard to tell about genuine enthusiasm (a pretty reserved bunch by all accounts), but someone decided there was some good bumper music on the album. Here's a link to a page at NPR's site where you can see the tune used and follow a link to a player that will play a chunk of the music for you. I hope it helps more people find my music!

NPR Morning Edition music cues played on March 31, 2008

2008-03-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Friend of Friends of Old Puppy Galen A. Tripp has uninvited houseguests. Cute, though.

2008-03-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

This weekend promises to be one filled with music played on the ukulele. This Saturday, March 15, after the weekly ten a.m. meeting of the Friends of Old Puppy at Nabolom Bakery in Berkeley, guitar hand Kurt Stevenson and I will decamp for a duet recital at the new Down Home Music Store (formerly Hear Music) from three until five p.m. We're there to promote my CD of ukulele instrumentals, UKEBOX. Come on by and check out Chris Strachwitz's new bundle of retail joy. :^)

On Sunday, March 16, Kurt will accompany me for a duet recital at Da Silva Ukuleles in Berkeley from seven thirty until nine thirty p.m. Admission is fifteen dollars (sliding).

I've added a link to an mp3 of Kurt and me as we take stock of "Chi Mi Frena" from Donizetti's "Lucia Di Lammermoor." I think the fact that Kurt learned the song from a Shirley Temple movie is somehow evident in his interpretation.

Chi Mi Frena - Kurt Stevenson and Steven Strauss

2008-02-11T11:18:00.000-08:00

SWEENEY FLOYD

"Attend the tale of Sweeney Floyd
Of seven seasons he enjoyed
And though the series was not renewed
He left all the scenery properly chewed..."

Thanks to Cynthia Strauss for sharing this with me, Kerry Parker for sending it to her, and Nina Feldman for including it in her humor distribution. Genius shall be rewarded - with multiple postings.

2008-02-10T17:37:00.000-08:00

Tim Fox doesn't really look like this, but he seems to like it better than his actual appearance. I can relate.

He hired me to play bass in his jazz quintet last year at the Hillside Club, and I just found out that there's a recording of my vocal turn posted on the 'net, through the courtesy of the man who put together the concert and engineered the audio, the spectacular Bruce Koball.

My song for Tim Fox

Here's the Hillside Club's writeup for the gig.

Dangerous Rhythm
In Concert
Friday, 19 January 2007 at 8:00 pm

The Berkeley Hillside Club is proud to present DANGEROUS RHYTHM in concert. This group of virtuoso players is a marvelous musical experiment performed to answer an intriguing "what if" question. Join us in the acoustically- wonderful Hillside Club for this evening of musical mischief.

What would swing have become had it not turned into bop? This is the musical premise behind guitarist Tim Fox's group, DANGEROUS RHYTHM. Playing mostly original compositions and the occasional not-so-moldy oldie, this group will get your toes tapping, your heart pumping, and your mind racing. Veteran bassist and vocalist Steven Strauss (Penelope Houston, the Hot Club of San Francisco, Old Puppy), vibraphonist and aspiring ukulelist, Gerry Grosz, accordionist extraordinary, Dan Cantrell (The Toids, Peoples Bizarre, Tom Waits), and percussionist Brian Rice (the Paul Winter Consort, Mike Marshall's Chôro Famoso, Wake the Dead, the pickPocket Ensemble) complete the group.
It's Twenty-First Century Swing, folks. Accept no substitutes.

Read my old post about Bruce Koball here.

2008-01-18T08:55:00.000-08:00

I wasn't always this jaded thing you see before you. There was a time, so long ago, when I could be charmed by razzmatazz. I was young once, and doo-wacka-doo hadn't done a doggone thing to me. Before I even had a ukulele, I would get down a tennis racket and pretend to strum along with a record I got out of the library, an Lp by hometown gents The Goodtime Washboard Three. I noticed it was on Berkeley's Fantasy Records label, known home to cultural icons Lenny Bruce, Vince Guaraldi, and Korla Pandit. When finally I got my hands on a ukulele I couldn't wait to learn the chords to play their erstwhile local radio sensation, "Oakland."

"Where did all those people go
When Frisco burned?
They all went to Oakland
And never returned..."

Oakland magazine has a nice little write up about the song, and the Three, and how it all came to be. The writer points out that appropriately enough it is no solemn civic anthem, but something along the lines of "fight - fight - fight!" There's even a link to an mp3 of the song (not the original recording).

If you learn it, too, we can sing it at Berkeley Ukulele Club!

2008-01-12T07:46:00.001-08:00

GENIUS AT WORK -
My high school avatar of cool
R. S. Eisenberg at his latter day workbench

2008-01-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

I checked in with one of my favorite music blogs today. "Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else" has been a reliable source of lost and forgotten music, recovered and restored by hand, and presented with an earnest appreciation for the music itself. Lee Hartsfeld of Ohio is the man who does all the work, and in appreciation for that work I do now salute him, as I have done before in these pages.

Numerous other sites on the 'net have processed and posted their audio finds. WFMU's Beware Of The Blog holds days on end of listenable artifacts of our culture, but the hipper-than-thou commentary that goes with it makes me queasy. I've been depressed by the general lack of appreciation there for anything that does not rock. To me it evinces a naive terror of becoming a square, of risking one's reputation as a hip person, a fate awaiting anyone who fails to die young. An hour clicking links at BOTB is like hanging out with a clever, talkative guy who's been collecting rock records and wearing the same leather jacket since his twenties. (Here I really ought to explain that three of my favorite people meet that description head on. I love them.)

Pulling up examples of what can be thought of as other people's mistakes may be entertaining for a few minutes of distraction, when you're stealing 'net time from the boss; that specific demographic can only have contributed to the success of WFMU's blog. Having taken the time to look over a hundred plus entries, I'm struck by how often the entry seems motivated by irresistible urge to stick it to anything resembling the man. (Steve Allen's late eighties touring contract, including fresh fruit requirements and instructions on caring for his hairpiece? Irresistible, perhaps; admirable, perhaps not.)

Don't get me wrong. I understand entirely the urge to disempower the oppressive forces of one's own mind. If the Brady Bunch theme has an evil hold on your consciousness, by all means, cast it out, with extreme prejudice. These people bust their hump to prepare and present stuff they think is dumb. "Can we agree this is not cool?" It gets my goat, because a whole lot of stuff they post just to piss on there, I hold close to my heart.

Lee Hartsfeld shares my beef with the spirit of BOTB, and unlike me (known the world over to run from any fight), has had the stones to write to them about it, earning only their scorn, prompting the administrators there to block some of his comments. I think he's been most offended by the editorial assumption that all those visiting the blog would agree that any religious expression is misguided at best. The things they've said about Little Marcy!

Lee recently posted a batch of sides including a cover of John Lennon's "Imagine," sung by Andy Williams. He shared a couple of sincere and contentious opinions about the recording: that the lyric was not as deep as its fans have held, and that Williams' voice was "better" than that of the songwriter.

One visitor, commenting on his entry, must have presumed Lee's motive was to hold Williams, a hopeless square, up to ridicule (as would happen routinely at BOTB); subsequently he seemed blindsided by Lee's spirited defense of and genuine appreciation for the singing of Andy Williams. His rejoinder was a sputtering paraphrase of "how am I going to get laid if anyone sees me hanging out with you, Uncle Elmer?"

2008-01-08T08:53:00.000-08:00

John Turturro wrote and directed a big crude singalong musical of blue collar New Jersey and somehow I missed it. I saw a couple of other clips a few weeks back on youtube, a funny song and dance with Kate Winslet, but when I saw this one today I put "Romance And Cigarettes" at the front of the Netflix queue. I can't wait to see the rest of this movie. Dreamgirls it obviously ain't.

I have had the chance to hang with some old world blue collar cats, bruisers and freight men, and their capacity to fall apart in the arms of song has made an indelible impression on me. The assumption that these guys are too tough to be soft hearted does them no service. In this clip, I wait for the shot of the welder pushing his visor up and extending his blowtorch as he sings.

Turturro's master stroke at the end of this clip is what to do after a big heartache song and dance. The shirt pocket pat.

http://www.romanceandcigarettesfilm.com/

2007-12-26T11:11:00.000-08:00

Do you drive a car? Do you want to transform the roads you drive on into sane and efficient lanes of smooth traffic? Do you want to help reduce the wasteful use of auto fuel, not only for you but for the drivers with whom you share the road? Please read the 1998 article TRAFFIC "EXPERIMENTS" AND A CURE FOR WAVES & JAMS by William Beaty. Take about ten minutes to read it over; once it's absorbed, you won't forget it. And it will make you a happier driver; I'll bet money on it. Comments posted on a page linked there offer additional observations that will enhance your experience. As 2007 draws to a close, and ways of making 2008 a better year fill my thoughts, I'm convinced it's the best thing I got to read all year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Electrical Engineer and transformative driver William Beaty

2007-12-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American composer who was fascinated by Native American culture. He wrote a successful series of atmospheric song cycles inspired by his studies of tribal music, which today are typically dismissed as naive, romantic misapprehensions of a strikingly unfamiliar world.

If that isn't a good blanket description of the entire musical genre of Exotica, it isn't far from the mark. For my current project, UKEBOX EXOTICA, I've been rummaging around the discard bins of popular music for lost threads of this enduring fabulist tapestry, one dominated today by the legacies of Martin Denny and Les Baxter. The work of Charles Wakefield Cadman proves to be a rich source of melody and mood.

For a little while I'll be posting here a GarageBand arrangement of The Rainbow Waters Whisper, the third in his 1913 cycle of four songs, "Idyls Of The South Sea." As soon as I figure out a ukulele part for me to play, I'm taking it down, so check it out now.

Charles Wakefield Cadman "Idyls Of The South Seas" III The Rainbow Waters Whisper - arranged by Steven Strauss

Here's a 1937 TIME article about gum chewing Charlie Cadman.

2007-12-05T10:12:00.001-08:00

Kurt Stevenson will accompany me on guitar when I appear on KALW-FM in December. I'll have forty five minutes or so to play music on the ukulele and talk a bit about it. And flack the record.

The program is KALW's A Patchwork Quilt, Red-bearded Kevin Vance's delirious weekly plunge into sensuous handmade music that defies category and resists exploitation. Tune in on Saturday, December Eight, or listen online. The program runs from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30; I'll appear at about the half-way point and go until the end. Kurt and I are planning something as musically expressive as we can execute.

If you're not tuned in by 5:45 p.m. you might miss something. If you have ukulele nuts in your extended family, encourage them to tune in.

In jazz news, Connie Doolan Quartet, of which I am roughly a fourth (more by weight), is almost ready to announce an east bay house concert on December 30, the day before New Year's Eve. When times are set, terms are known, and directions have been drawn up, I'll post about it at Connie Doolan Quartet's stately web log.

Deborah Robins just sent me an email with this photograph attached. She snapped this at The New Zealander in Alameda a few nights ago. I'm shown playing my RISA Uke Solid, accompanying Regina Maria Pontillo, one of my very favorite performers ever. Regina and I willl be angling hard to get another gig there come January.

Click here if you think you'd like to hear a sloppy but swinging electric ukulele demo!

2007-11-27T08:21:00.000-08:00

DaSilva Ukuleles is participating in Berkeley Artisans Holiday Open Studios every weekend in December. Folks coming by can watch work on ukuleles in various stages of completion, test drive new ukes, and check out Michael DaSilva's forward-looking ukulele programs.

Mike got a lot of nice ink from the San Francisco Chronicle last Sunday. Want to read Ian Lendler's take on the current enthusiasm for the ukulele? It's here at sfgate.com.

Mike's asked me to come play acoustic ukuleles on stage during the open house, and with such great sounding ukes on hand I can't resist. On Saturday I'll be there just as soon as I get everything put away from my usual 10:00am-1:00pm session on electric ukulele at Berkeley's venerable Nabolom Bakery. So expect me to be playing ukuleles at DaSilva's shop from three until six o'clock or so Saturday, and the next morning from 11am until about 2pm, at which time Al Dodge's Sun Dodgers will be ready to crank up the gramophone era sounds. (Faith Yang of Oregon took the picture above at DaSilva's.)

2007-11-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

Hey friends of the UKEBOX thing

UKEBOX is now available at the iTunes Store. It's a foot in the door. If you'd like to see the door wedged open a little wider, there is a way you can help.

When you get to the iTunes Store you can search on Steven Strauss or UKEBOX and you'll get the album page. Listen to samples. If you've heard the CD and like it, consider saying something nice about it in the customer reviews. (I'd do it myself but there are people who would know instantly.) Even if all you hear is samples, feel free to say you like them.

Is this album in the wrong category (Easy Listening)? We don't come up among the recent releases in Easy Listening anyway, so what's the point of having that handle? Just makes ya fly lopsided...

You can help me pay for this album without any further outlay of funds, because I don't need to sell a million. But it'll take people unintentionally discovering UKEBOX while browsing. I just want a tiny fraction of that browsing market.

Have I mentioned we're at CDBaby, too? You can get a copy sent to your home or office. Samples there run two minutes, too, if hearing more of each tune would make a difference.

click to UKEBOX at CDBaby

Believe me, this is better than being signed to Warner Brothers.

2007-11-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

I'm just sayin'.

2007-10-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

I ran across a discussion question on a classical music forum asking whether anyone passing though also really liked rap and hip-hop. From the wording it was clear that the person posing the question found such a thing unlikely and had no use for the stuff. I felt the urge to respond, and wrote what follows.

In the fifties rock and roll's ability to infuriate the elders was most of its appeal! Hip hop similarly knows whom it offends and is comfortable with that.

 

 I can imagine hip hop that I can really enjoy - and there are rare instances in which a hip hop record's appeal makes it past my disinclination to the style, owing to the personality of the speaker or the potency of the message, or sometimes just the happy collage of sampled elements. Sometimes a real generosity of spirit emerges, sometimes a trenchant wit, or an obviously keen ear for sound or rhythm.

 

 But most of the hip hop I hear is from a world I don't want to be in, a form of expression made of elements I avoid intuitively: boasting, threatening, brute force, gender tyranny. (I don't doubt they are integral to the artist's realm, as much as daffodils were in Wordsworth's.) Rapping came up as a competitive expression in a proscribed social order where I would not last a week. In this world, just as in that of the concert hall, stardom is subject to irrational and unfair accidents of weather and circumstance; musical distinction is but a tangential factor. (When I'm driving to a gig with bandmates and De La Soul comes up in the shuffle, the discomfort of my passengers is louder than even their disdain. I usually have to skip to the next track, out of pity.)

 

 From my vantage point I sense that we are lucky there is any commercial music at all that we can really embrace. (If I saw an ad for it I'm bound to resist it.)

 

 We like to think we have feelings and thoughts but I keep finding evidence that our thoughts and feelings have us! In high school I hated to hear the music bullies listened to ("Skynard!"), and the guys who wolf whistled my sister. If you think our musical tastes are primarily aesthetic I would suggest you're hiding from yourself.

 

 Imagine what resentments the choral Ode To Joy might bring up in a kid from a tough neighborhood. What pictures do you think it conjures? Might it not evoke an authoritarian order bent on his oppression? Or at the very least a world in which he has no place and nothing to offer?

 

 If I'd known before becoming a musician how rarely popular success results from a high level of musicality I would have skipped the trying-to-make-it phase entirely. The artist that succeeds in capturing the imagination of the public does so largely on the basis of emotional theater of some kind, not so much by concentrating on musicality. Emotional theater gives the non-musician a way to identify with the performance. A favorite singer, especially, lives for a fan more as an animus or an avatar than as a creator of expressive works. People bond with their ideas of the artists they follow, and the relationship is necessarily without much basis in reality. Verdad, it is so rarely about the music itself.

 

 Please forgive my rambling! Thank God I ran out of words.

2007-09-13T09:35:00.000-07:00

Kevin Carpenter was my first friend when I got to high school in 1972. We've kept our lives congruent for about half our subsequent lives, but not so much recently. We talked on the phone last week and made a plan to go back to the Broom Bush for pancakes, like we used to during the Clinton administration.

He told me he'd seen me playing ukulele and singing on YouTube. You could have knocked me over. I racked my brain but finally it occurred to me what it was - a strange low budget video show I performed on a couple years ago in a makeshift studio on Old Bayshore Highway in San Francisco. Everything will eventually wind up on the 'net, so why fight it?

The hostess finally gets around to introducing my performance after about five and a half minutes of willfully obtuse behavior. I had no idea the feral girl was going to crawl across me while I played.

Malaka Mo Kalu - Steven Strauss And His Ukulele
I definitely had the David Seville haircut that week.

A friend wrote to tell me that in this picture I look like the cat from Shellac Shanty.

2007-09-13T09:34:00.001-07:00

I thought it would be a good idea to share an exceptional recording, a rare example of a uke-strumming singer whose appeal is almost entirely musical. He's not pouring on the charm in the manner of the master entertainer, but he's really delivering an adroit and nuanced performance. He makes it sound mighty easy.

No Wonder She's A Blushing Bride - Art Fowler And His Ukulele

"Aaow, sompn just pote me in the nayeck!"

(from 11/30/05)

2007-09-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

I came home from playing bass with Failure To Disperse (old timey music) at the Solano Stroll Sunday at about six. We made pretty good tip money. It was my forty-ninth birthday. I went out on our tiny porch balcony to see my wife Cynthia, who gave me our little yearling cat, Geoffrey, to hold. A friend in a neighboring apartment took a picture. It was a good day.

"Amy, the calamari was superb." - Vern Agoyan

2007-07-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Glad, I guess, to report that taking care of my new record of uke instrumentals, UKEBOX, and its new friends, really has my hands full. Who's have thought they'd be so hard to mail to Canada?

After a US judge threw out Valerie Plame's civil suit today, and after Hillary Clinton took a torpedo to the bow for her position on the war giving supposed aid and comfort to the enemy (huh?), I was ready for a heartfelt dressing down of our commander in cheat from the eloquent sportsman himself, Keith Olbermann. This seven minutes and change is one of KO's most incisive and persuasive editorials, and if you truly, deeply, madly resent the gray-haired college republican who holds the highest office in our beautiful land, your heart will find Keith's dear john letter to the preznit cathartic and satisfying.

If you think GWB is getting a tough break, you might rather just listen to Connie Francis singing a German lyric for "Where The Boys Are." I like it, too.

Special Comment for July 19, 2007 episode of MSNBC's "Countdown" - Keith Olbermann

Nothing sung by Gigli ever satisfied my soul quite like Keith's aria tonight.

Wenn Ich Traume - Connie Francis

Sang so unser Connie.

2007-06-22T17:43:00.001-07:00

Jim and Liz Beloff really like the ukulele.

Jim Beloff just added my new CD of ukulele instrumentals, UKEBOX, to the on-line store at Flea Market Music. He said some very nice things about the music. While there, why don't you sign up for the twice yearly catalog he sends ukulele fans in their mailboxes?

Flea Market Music's On-Line Store's blurb for UKEBOX Instrumental Magic From the Ukulele of Steven Strauss

2007-06-07T11:25:00.001-07:00

Record release party Sunday, June 17, at DaSilva Ukulele shop in Berkeley, CA. Meeting and greeting at five, concert at seven. We'll charge ten at the door, and for just that night we'll sell the CD for half price: ten dollars. Information about the shop, and the ukulele maker behind it, can be found at ukemaker.com. Hang on tight!

Click on the pretty picture above to see a bigger image and read the text!

Oh, by the way. You could do me a really big favor by getting in touch with me via MySpace. Check this link: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=69912178 It will help me learn to use MySpace like a reckoning critter.

2007-06-07T11:24:00.001-07:00

Expanded Liner Notes for
UKEBOX by Steven Strauss

01 Speevey

Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelly were the take off players in the Quintette du Hot Club de Paris. The group recorded nearly constantly, and the two frequently made up tunes on the spot. Speevey would seem to be one of those tunes. It was recorded once, and it was never released during their career. In the very last eight bars Django, seated right by the mic, began whomping the strings of his guitar so loudly it was sure to "foul the take," as if something about the performance had rubbed him the wrong way.

In the last ten years or so the recording has been added to the Django anthology, and jazz manouche players are starting to learn it and play it in tribute. I fell in love with this oddly simple piece of music while playing bass in the Hot Club of San Francisco under the direction of the spectacular gypsy-jazz guitarist Paul Mehling.

I rescued a boy from drowning once, and in gratitude his parents got Bobby Black to come into the studio and play his no-pedal steel guitar on this tune with me.

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02 C'est lui que mon coeur a choisi

In the early eighties I was writing out lead sheets for extra cash; give me a cassette and twenty five dollars and I'll bring you a piece of staff paper with the melody and chords written out. Rowena Kaiser, studying trombone at the time, brought me a tape with two songs by Edith Piaf, and getting the melody exactly as played was a new challenge. The style was unfamiliar to me, and the chords changes were timed in a way so unlike those of jazz standards. It took me more than twice as long to figure out than a jazz standard, but by the time I delivered the work I had every bit of it floating around in my head.

Seth Asarnow has a bustling career playing piano (and occasionally string bass), but his passion and his mission are bound up in the bandoneon, the Argentine tango accordion. Even on this sonically asymmetrical squeeze box, notorious for its idiosyncratic layout of pitches, Seth is one of those enviable "think it - play it" musicians. After a gig together at the Fairmont Hotel in 1988 he showed me the works, and I am still recovering. He played me the theme from Lost In Space, having never played it before on the bandoneon, slowing slightly here and there to grope for the right pitch. When it was over he had to figure out how to play the original theme from Lost In Space, the one that was superceded after the first season. I am in permanent awe, and never more so than when I hear him play on this lovely French cafe waltz.

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03 Lazy Moon

Laurel and Hardy first starred in a U.S. feature film in 1931, in "Pardon Us." Their characters, afoul of the law with some bootleg liquor, must run and hide. The hiding part includes secreting themselves into a blackface minstrel troupe; Stan Laurel performs an intoxicating rubber legs dance culminating in a mud puddle, but first Ollie pipes up like a boy tenor, entirely recognizable under a smear of burnt cork, to sing what even then was a hoary old chestnut, 1905's Lazy Moon, by Bob Cole and J. Rosamonde Johnson.

I asked the great traditional fiddler Suzy Thompson to make up an old string band type melody to fit the chord changes of this number, without letting her know what the tune was. She brings us a mournful old moan, buffeted by the stately tuba of Rick Elmore and the softshoe shoosh of percussionist and drummer Kevin Mummey. All throughout the tune is adorned with the impromptu stylings of jazz violinist Julian Smedley, who also reads down the string section finale like a pit orchestra at the operetta.

The multitalented Rick Elmore

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04 The Beer Barrel Polka (Modranska Polka)

Concert scale "Frisco Uke" by Marc Silber and Chuck Fayne

Not a very old tune at all, but an enormous hit right from the git, and the USA's greatest contribution to the broad-ranging and misunderstood canon of the polka. Flat-picker Eric Thompson learned it from the proto-bluegrass stylings of Reno and Smiley, and his observance of their subdominant harmony on the second theme creates a palpable tension with the dominant ninth feeling of the original. If this tune's not exciting enough for you, you can put the record back; in the picnic lunch this recording aims to be, this is the energy drink.

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05 Stella By Starlight

I'd heard jazz saxophonists soloing on these changes forever, and I thought I knew how Stella By Starlight went until I heard it sung by Tony Bennett in an early sixties recording. It's not hearing the words that made the difference, but Tony's relaxed and sure-footed apprehension of the widely-pitched melody, just divergent enough from the printed score to sound like he had it tailor made. I can't hear it in my head any other way.

I started to pick it out on the 'ukulele as a gag, confident that the limited compass of the instrument would defeat such ambition. To my surprise I found all the notes I needed - just barely. Making me sound like a jazz player are the impeccable drummer Kevin Mummey and Julian Smedley, sophistication itself on the very jazzy violin.

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06 I Am So Proud

Here's the other outrageous reach that didn't crash and burn, my setting for guitar, string bass, and three 'ukuleles of a trio from Act I of Gilbert and Sullivan's masterwork The Mikado. In it three men take turns giving reasons that they must regretfully decline to offer their necks on the chopping block when "a victim must be found." They make lovely excuses.

On the subject of excuses, I played a little bit of one part and then a little bit of another, switching instruments under the skeptical supervision of co-producer John Rewind. I hardly noticed that I kept titching up the pitch on each instrument to be slightly higher than its accompaniment, until the whole enterprise wound up more than just pennies sharp from standard tuning. If you are playing along with this CD you will lose all patience with your practice somewhere during this track.

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07 The Donkey Serenade

Allan Jones broke both rules of show business singing this song in a movie. Amid the vocal interjections of a little boy he sings this serenade to the donkey pulling him in a cart.

Musical illusionist Scott Young brought his box mute and his trombone to the studio, knowing how quietly I play 'ukulele, and gave out with a couple of simply perfect parts, this one evoking the post-horn of a mounted rider. Even though the 'ukes chug along throughout, it is when Scott holds out a plain vanilla long note above the rhythm that the track seems to go airborne.

Scott Young, Honky Tonk Man
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08 Surrey With The Fringe On Top

Blossom Dearie's record of this song was a revelation to me. I'd previously regarded it as one of Richard Rodgers' dumbest tunes, and one of the least dignified lyrics in the history of the musical stage. Blossom brought her cool jazz touch on the piano to it, slowed it down to a walk, and sang it in an intimate whisper. At once I realized, this is a song of surreptitious seduction, and calculated to draw the listener into the singer's embrace. It worked on me.

I picked up the tempo just a little from hers and enlisted super steady Kevin Mummey on drums, just to make it easier to impose a kind of Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five steady throb to the melody. The remarkable Scott Young and his quiet trombone, fresh in from that downhill romp on a donkey cart, cool it down in perfect step with our well-used pair of snow white hosses.

Scott Young arranged the National Anthem for the voices of his honky-tonk band, Red Meat

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09 Feria de las Flores

This Mexican waltz has been around the world, from mariachi to Nat King Cole to exotica organist Korla Pandit, from whose recording I taught myself the tune. (He got some of it pretty wrong, and in standardizing the tune for myself I've only halfway corrected the error.)

I'd been acquainted with it from my days in Bradley Jaye Williams' conjunto Los Pinkys, where we played it as a polka, following the example of accordionists Flaco and Santiago Jimenez.

It was as a waltz, though, that it endeared itself to me.

Magician Seth Asarnow lifts my 'ukulele up on the shoulders of his broad bandoneon once again, creating an atmosphere of fountains and hummingbirds with his fluttering and trilling and burbling. Percussionist Pete Devine, with nothing but a nose flute, turns up the atmosphere to eleven, stimulating an ad hoc chorus of wild birds outside Mike Wollenberg's hillside studio in Canyon, California.

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10 Mi Cafetal / Ay! Mi Yacquicita

Ay! Mi Yaquicita, played by Conjunto Murrietta, was included in a collection of music from Native American accordion bands. Called "Chicken Scratch Fiesta," the album was released more than thirty years ago by Arizona's Canyon Records, a long-established label devoted to the music of Native Americans. I learned it while playing bass for California winemaker and accordionist Dan Warrick, who learned it from Buffalo, Wyoming accordionist, folklorist, and state poet laureate David W. Romtvedt, who added the catchy stop-time phrase right before the tune comes back to the top.

Dan Warrick

Wyoming's David Romtvedt

I sent some rough tracks for this tune to Austin, Texas, to my old bandleader from Los Pinkys, Bradley Jaye Williams, asking him to play on it. (He pretty much taught me how to play the cumbia in that band.) He sent the tracks back with some nifty parts, including the bajo sexto part we include in this final arrangement. Bradley was really enthusiastic and helped me through some discouraging phases of the long process of making a record without a budget. Working on this track he reminded me that during our time playing music together we had been fantasizing about a band that would play a happy hybrid of Norteño and Hawaiian sounds. "A Tiki-Mex band, man."

Bradley Jaye Williams makes the bajo sexto bark like a dog!

When it was time to finish this tune up I turned to slack-key guitarist Patrick Landeza, who's hired me a few times to play bass for him lately. Patrick understood instantly and really warmed the whole thing up. Baile! Hula! Tiki-Mex, man!

Patrick Landeza

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11 Georgia On My Mind

Memory loss is an inevitable byproduct of aging, and I'll be damned if I can remember where all these thoughts related to this song came from. I know somebody turned to me on the bandstand and said, "Georgia was a girl!" Whether I read the rest or dreamed it, I don't know; I can't find the information I expected, but here I go anyway.

Young Hoagy Carmichael

I recall something about Hoagy Carmichael growing up playing piano four hands with his sister in the parlor, like countless American brothers of that era. I always thought the verse to this song was a lot like Liszt's Liebestraum in A flat. Liebestraum was a hit sheet music melody for playing at home on the parlor piano, and four handed arrangements were popular when Hoagy was a youngster. I have this image of Hoagy remembering this family pastime and thinking fondly on his sister, recalling the strains of Love's Dream, and making those strains the jumping off place of a grown up song about missing home and hearth and the way things used to be. "A song of you comes as sweet and clear as moonlight thru' the pine."

I couldn't resist a chance at sibling harmony with my own dear sister, Christine Emerson; we oohed through a a few measures of Billy Wilson's solo on the baritone 'ukulele. (Billy has me playing 'ukulele in his "ukecentric" combo Old Puppy with guitar whiz Kurt Stevenson and Billy's sister Cynthia Wilson on percussion.)

Billy Wilson and me

I played my RISA Uke Solid on this track. Sounds like a 'ukulele to me.

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12 Oh! Mister Kane (A Poco No)

In Citizen Kane there's a scene at a party, where Kane and his staff are celebrating the acquisition of their rival paper's writers. A line of chorus girls comes out waggling and a man with a cane and a straw boater begins to holler, Cohan-like, this song with words about the ambitious tycoon's wealth and growing fame. Harry Ruby's words are mostly atrocious, intentionally so, except maybe "who buys the food? / who buys the drinks? / who thinks that dough was made to spend and acts the way he thinks?"

A pitiful accordion wheezes the tune in the alley after he loses the election, and the entire cast makes its curtain call to guest arranger Conrad Salinger's footlight orchestration of this flimsy ditty. Maybe hearing this tune as an accompaniment to closing credits made me think this was a natural closer for our program.

Early write-ups of the picture claimed that the film's composer, Bernard Herrmann, had appropriated a folk song called "A Poco No" for "Oh! Mister Kane," but recently published cue sheets for the film score actually credit the tune to a Mexican pop-song writer named Pepe Guizar, who, under the name Jose Pepe Guizar Morfin (el Pintor Musical de Mexico), published the Mexican standard Guadalajara.

Pepe Guizar, looking very WSJ

Rick Elmore

Rick Elmore's buoyant tuba succeeds a bass line established by jug virtuoso Pete Devine, who takes up a pair of brushes and pops some old-time flavor out of his antique store drum kit.

Pete Devine, people!

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All other parts played by Steven Strauss on the concert scale Frisco Uke by Marc Silber and Chuck Fayne, a Fluke 'ukulele, a 2000 Martin SO Model soprano 'ukulele, the RISA electric solid body soprano 'ukulele, Gibson tenor guitar, Harmony baritone 'ukulele, Johnson electric bass guitar, Spanish guitar, and Mid-fifties Kay string bass.
String arrangement on "Lazy Moon"
by Steven Strauss with Julian Smedley.
Engineered by John Rewind for Rear Window Music.
CD Mastering by Paul Stubblebine at Paul Stubblebine Mastering and DVD
Editing assistance and attitude lessons from Julian Smedley.
Produced by Steven Strauss and John Rewind.
Striking cover art by Heather Watts at heatherwatts.com

2007-05-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

Just feeling restless and had to post for a few days a couple tunes I'm wrestling with. They are not in final form; they won't be up for long, so get 'em while they're hot!

Thanks For The Memory (Rainger/Robin) (Academy Award Winner - Best Song of 1938) - Steven Strauss, ukulele

"Panoramablick Schottische" (Unknown Composition and Title) - Steven Strauss, ukulele

2007-02-27T22:26:00.000-08:00

It's a complicated situation, but currently I'm keeping and playing a lovely old Martin 1K model ukulele. Some day It may belong to me, but for the time being I am allowed to play it. It's sweet-sounding in that really dry, modest Martin classic way.

I used GarageBand to record myself playing on it "The Interlochen Bowl (1934)," a sublime and peaceable march by Edwin Franko Goldman. No overdubbing was used in my ukulele part, although there is a two measure splice. I played the tune in one take, which was for me an acrobatic feat. Having written the midi accompaniment, I hope it does not annoy.

In my twenties I went steady with the Eastman Wind Ensemble's sixties era recording of this foot lifter, conducted by Interlochen alumnus and former drum major Frederick Fennell. The arrangement included a fine "gang sing" by the idle players.

Sound the call for dear old Interlochen
Land of the stately pine
Where stalwart friends and loyal ever greet you
Faithful for Auld Lang Syne
Old friends you'll greet
New ones you'll meet
A welcome you'll ever find
So sound the call for dear old Interlochen
Shrine of the muse divine

When I learned that the wonderful actor Felicity Huffman had attended Interlochen, my first thought was to write an arrangement of this march for ukulele, and then try to convince William H. Macy to learn it for a wedding anniversary gift. After that I remembered how much I hate to impose. Just let the Macys know it's here to listen to. If I'm lucky each of them will like it for a different reason.
The Interlochen Bowl (1934) - Steven Strauss, ukulele

2007-02-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the web log for my upcoming CD release, UKEBOX. Things are getting exciting here at my music desk. We're about to pull together the money for a manufacturing run for this CD of instrumentals. If you'd like to pre-order UKEBOX send us an e-mail at ukebox-at-yahoo.com (using the typical "@" protocol) and we'll tell you how to do it.

The commentary and features (replete with illustrations and audio examples) available previously at this web address are currently in archive and are not available for reading. I'll be setting up another web log to hold those contents and subsequently will re-post them there.

More developments soon!

Steven

2007-02-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

cover art by the amazing
Heather Watts
at heatherwatts.com

2006-09-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

Bruce Koball is one of the greatest all around forces for good in my musical universe. He's a successful sound designer who spends his off hours recording talented but impecunious musicians. A veteran of KSAN-FM live remotes in the 'seventies, when FM radio was absolutely the hippest thing going, he's recorded some legendary San Francisco performances.

Bruce was also one of the main guiding voices in the establishment of The Well, ostensibly the first internet conversation community, and is a tech geek of the noblest and most venerated stripe.

In the interest of full disclosure I shall state that many of the tracks on Old Puppy - Fetching were recorded by Bruce.

I'm sure the New York Times can tell you better than I can.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/nyregion/21train.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1158866139-Zz08XTPFlRXrkMvD9QP5Rw

2006-08-28T20:16:00.000-07:00

God bless Lee Hartsfeld.

I have been remiss in not mentioning earlier the 'net's nutritional powerhouse of old music mp3s, recordings lovingly recovered from technical difficulty, delivered with bitter humor and a deep affection for abandoned musical strategies. His old blog, Vintage Lounge, held forth much evidence refuting the widely held canard that lounge music was born in response to the hi-fi boom of the fifties. There were recordings from the forties, thirties, twenties, and before, which bore striking resemblances to lounge archetypes of the fifties. If you've got any interest in the forgotten histories of recorded music, Lee's blog, "Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anywhere Else" will get you stuck in its corner of the web for quite some time. His own pan-stylistic series of midi realizations of "Stairway To Heaven" (polka? slaughter on tenth avenue?) are endlessly entertaining and deserving of critical study. (His Raymond Scott style arrangement of Ghost Riders In The Sky is hilarious, too.) What are you doing here? Check out the music on offer from Lee Hartsfeld of New Florida - I mean, Ohio.

Lee Hartsfeld's music blog: Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anywhere Else

2006-08-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

I sent a friend an mp3 of "The House Is Haunted" by Mel Tormé, and mentioned that when he wasn't thinking up clever stuff for intros and endings Mel was about the best boy singer ever. He wrote back, credulity strained, what about Fred Astaire and the guy who sang Thank Heaven For Little Girls. Here's what I replied:

"I'm not talking about entertainment. I'm talking about singing, without the acting.

"Fred and Maurice were good at entertaining. Maurice had no other strength. Sang and danced with charm and no talent. It was easy to like him and enjoy his appearance. It was how comfortable he seemed at doing it that sold it as a performance. But I don't care about that half as much as I care about the pleasure I can get from hearing the sound of the singing. That's what Mel did best.

"Fred danced better than he entertained, and he entertained better than he sang. Mel danced well but sang spectacularly, and when he tried to be entertaining he was nearly unbearable. Buddy Rich once said that Mel's drumming was pretty good for a dancer.

"I'm not talking about liking the performer or the performance. I admire the work of all three but I don't expect personal accounts of their lives will give me a lot to cheer. I'm sure the loved ones of women they dated all dreaded what would become of the ladies.

"...the cute little intros and outros on Mel Torme records? I swear they got put there to make for a more entertaining presentation, but to me it's the part that makes it seem desperate.

"In closing I can only point out that "boy singer" is a category from which Fred and Maurice would have been denied entry. The standard of that category would be Merv Griffin.

"Show business is in our blood,
whether it makes us sick or strong."

Just hear how Mel Tormé could sing.

The House Is Haunted - Mel Tormé

2006-04-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

TWO RIFFS IN ONE KEY

One thing that probably seemed obvious to you (though it blind-sided me) is how many social or political conservatives I'd encounter in traditional or "square" music. I guess I assumed that the kinds of abandoned technologies and unfashionable musical values I hold dear would make anyone feel like a freak.

But at least in the San Francisco bay area, retro music worlds turn out to be havens for conservatives of many kinds. There's the dixieland bandleader with the No Spin Zone door mat and the welfare queen jokes, the rockabilly kids who beat up old dirty foreigners on principle, the vo-do-de-o ukulele strummer who thinks gay people are sick and best avoided, the jitterbug dancer who claims to know what God wants us all to do.

I'd expect these people to listen to Toby Keith and Rod Stewart, not to Louis Armstrong and the Cheap Suit Serenaders. What do I know? According to inside sources, the latter band suffered a near fatal seizure in the late seventies amid troubling conditions of internecine hatred and ethnic bigotry.

Addendum: Then there's the public's willingness to make racists out of anti-modernists. If I avoid Hip Hop for its obsessions with boasting and threatening, that makes me vulnerable to charges of racism. (Aggressive young men of every race and culture embrace Hip Hop as confirmation of their aggressive natures. Hip Hop is really not being made for librarians; I maintain the right to listen to music that flatters the egos of nerds like myself.)

The Flea Market Music bulletin board linked to a New York times article about the musical tastes of Stephin Merritt, a New York 'uke scenester. More concept than art, but different strokes, you know?

Link to New York Times piece. Also Slate picked up a rock in this fight.

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key change

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Hey, when disco came in I saw the money fall out of the live band market, just as I was getting started. Did I demonize disco? Vociferously. Could I do a thing to stop it? Nothing, really. Was I ingracious? Undoubtedly. (Have I been listening to Donald Rumsfeld lately? Of course I have.) But although it made music sick for a while, disco didn't kill music. Disco's own inability to retain popular rule forever lends a new poignancy to those slick, unsubtle sounds.

Now that we know that the most coked-out players of the idiom either cleaned up or crashed and burned, I'm freed from my resentment. Bye Bye, Rick James. There's just a rueful sniff for the ruined and a relieved "right on" for the survivors. And I can listen to Funky Town with my windows rolled down.

But the dancers appeared so pleased with themselves, and in such an unseemly manner. Was I jealous of how much more action they were getting? Come on, baby, let me know.

PEACE

8^)

2006-04-13T05:46:00.000-07:00

PLAYING 'UKULELE
FOR ABOUT A YEAR

If you want to know why a person who plays music on the 'ukulele might break his toe kicking stuff, look no further. Go here to the San Luis Obispo Tribune to read all about the kind of empowerment for which my beloved instrument is world famous.

2006-03-07T01:43:00.000-08:00

The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet

Hollywood found the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet irresistible for their hard-swinging, gospel-based, rhythmic singing. If their one appearance in a Hollywood musical is any indication, Hollywood had no convincing notion of how to exploit their considerable charisma and elan. In the recording below, from the Dick Powell picture "Star Spangled Rhythm," the Gates are given to impersonate railroad car attendants, coaxing a night owl and his date out of the dining coach in time for curfew. Lead singer and proto-rapper Bill Johnson makes rapturous hay of the premise, courteously laying out the case against staying up all night. No subsequent recording of the song has approached the relaxed swing and easy confidence of this premiere performance, entrusted to the highly capable Golden Gate Quartet.

Hit The Road To Dreamland - Dick Powell, Mary Martin, The Golden Gate Quartet

2006-02-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

The master. Herb Ohta. Ohta-san.

He knows how to play music on the 'ukulele. And now he's set to be honored Saturday, March 4, by the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts as one of five recipients of this year's HARA Lifetime Achievement Awards.

I think he's talking to a few notable young gunslinging 'ukulele players with the closing quote of the herein-linked Hawaii Star Bulletin feature. He's seeking a "sophisticated simplicity -- because you know a little more and you can feel the music. I've always told people that you have to feel the music or you can't play it. Just because you play 1,000 notes, it doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't say anything."

Little Brown Gal - Ohta-san

2006-02-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

Upper body strength: Alfons Bauer

Alfons Bauer is the man when it comes to the alpine zither. His superior technique, his broad expressive control of the instrument, amaze even more when you find out how hard the player has to push on that fretboard to get a sound! Even before I blew out my elbows I could get a sound out the thing for maybe twenty seconds, tops. Alfons looks like he could have held up the end of an axle and walked your busted wagon back to the shop. Hearing this man play ALWAYS makes me want to pick up my 'ukulele!.

Beim Schützenfest - Alfons Bauer

I hope Lee Hartsfeld likes this music!

PS~ Monday midday and I find Alfons Bauer's name in the credits for two tunes on Morcheeba's album Big Calm. "Bullet Proof" and "Diggin' A Watery Grave." I couldn't hear no zither on "Bullet Proof." Any ideas?

2006-02-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE FOR A CHANGE

Here's a fretboard diagram chart I just finished for my 'ukulele arrangement of Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo. It's not much help if the tune isn't in your head already, there are no chord names whatsoever, and if you're using classic re-entrant tuning (high G) some parts of it will sound wrong. If you know how the tune goes and have a low G tuned 'ukulele, it might sound pretty good to you. I'd be interested to read your comments on it.

2006-02-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

MY FIRST RANT

Am I into the 'ukulele? I've always assumed so, but I have to ask myself. Aside from playing string bass parts and bass guitar parts in groups with other people, the only music I have learned to make is music I arrange for solo 'ukulele and train myself to play.

My piano playing is sloppy AND choppy; my guitar playing sounds as though I have claws for hands. It hurts my ears and discourages dancing.

At fourteen, I began playing music for my own enjoyment. It was on my dad's dusty Harmony 'uke (with molded fretboard) that I first began to look for the music going through my head. There was a lot of humming and a lot of strumming, but I got in the habit of making music so I could hear with my ears the tunes I was thinking about.

I played string bass for a living, however moth-eaten, for a dozen years, before a catastrophic attack of tendinitis in the mid-nineties cut it short. For two months I played nothing, and then I began to play 'ukulele, just a little every day. From playing bass in other people's bands I'd committed to memory a few hundred tunes, and a couple dozen of them were just stinking up the waiting room. I had to learn to play them on 'ukulele just to help exorcise them from my thoughts, and before long I was playing 'ukulele all day.

I've gone from three crossword puzzles a day to three a year. I take the 'ukulele anywhere and everywhere, and I'm forever playing on it just as quietly as I can. I've found unexpected rewards in playing it quietly. The louder you play it, the faster the decay, i.e., the plunkier the tone. The thing sounds prettier and has a warm sustain when played quietly. It's kind of adddictive.

I've come to understand music more fully because of playing music on the 'ukulele. I love the sound of the thing, particularly my own instrument, strung and tuned away from standard but entirely to my taste. Your 'ukulele? I guess it would be polite to take an interest in everyone else's 'ukulele, but I have music to learn, and I'm not going to live forever.

I am wild about Jim Beloff's The Ukulele - A Visual History, and there are a couple of living 'ukulele players I enjoy listening to, but with a few exceptions, the great big 'ukulele community and I met, made eyes at each other, and then just sort of lost each other's numbers. As a 'uke nut I feel wholly inadequate. Am I trawling for 'ukuleles on eBay, collecting 'uke memorabilia and tiki mugs, getting a 'ukulele themed aloha shirt, going out to hear 'ukulele players? Not so much. It all takes money. I've been a musician most of my adult life. Apart from playing music, life is a scramble for gigs interspersed with chores at home and driving gear around. Am I trying to figure out a way to get Bobby Black in a recording studio with me again? More like that.

I apologize if the name of my web log aroused an appetite for 'ukulele-themed materials without doing anything to satisfy it. I'm doing my very best.

2006-02-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

Viewing the video clip linked here is a lot like watching me play Gilbert and Sullivan on the 'ukulele, if you're sensitive to fluctuations in basic dignity. At least I experienced a profound sense of a dream shared. This Eurotainer's orange jump suit is embroidered with little squeeze-bulb bike horns. He gets the Beethoven, Vivaldi, even Strauss, but when he busts out "Popcorn" by Hot Butter, you got to hand it to him. Think he's French?

2006-01-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

"The Spot Ten Nineteen is discussed"

Spot 1019's first album, now on CD, turns twenty years old in 2006. Superficially a classic power trio with a writhing lead singer, Spot inverted every convention it found in the course of its smart, determined and unique career. Their web pages don't seem to have been updated since before Colin Powell's resignation, but at the time of the last update they announced a new CD, "In Her Satanic Majesty's Secret Service Entrance." They deserved a great deal more attention than they got as youngsters, but you can still adopt a new favorite band, one that's sadder and wiser, more bitterly funny than ever. A band more like you.

CMJ wrote this about the first album. Something in the tone tells all you need to know about the shot the machine was willing to give them, man. Around 1990 Spot's lead singer Joe Sloan told an interviewer that in a world where people claim Rod Stewart has a meat and potatoes rock voice, his would probably qualify as macaroni and cheese.

Find your checkbook, go on line to their BUY STUFF page, get their mailing address and send them some money. They'll send you some scorching grinding grooves with a brilliant madman's freely associated rhymes and sideways smartassery. The new album makes four from which to choose. The two songs posted below are from the debut album, depicted above with the lovely spray-painted macaroni on ramen panels artwork.

Spot 1019 - Taste the Feel
Spot 1019 - Copacetic

2006-01-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

On the subject of musical evolution I can heartily recommend Richard Hadlock's illuminating book, "Jazz Masters Of The Twenties." (As of this writing there are thirty one used copies in paperback at Amazon dot com, from $3.49.) His chapter "The Chicagoans" describes in detail some congruent and overlapping spheres of musical influence in the world of Bix and Hoagy and George Wettling and Dave Tough. The book provides a perspective on creating music wholly unrelated to the usual "Sonny Rollins returned from exile with a mission burning within..." claptrap.

Like any language, music can only be understood to the extent that listener and player share points of reference. Music is created in community, and its sounds are made of the music its players remember. You'd be surprised how much jazz writing forgets that.

(From 01/20/06)

2006-01-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, Connie - singer Connie Doolan

Just so you don't assume from my windy entries here at the web log that I'm always full of hot air, here's a confession. Connie Doolan asked me to submit a little bit of text for the liner notes of the new album by Connie Doolan Quartet, of which I am the bass playing member. In five weeks I started three different little submissions, but I couldn't bear to send any of them for approval.

I'm certainly proud of the recordings; the musicianship of my colleagues is exceptionally good, and it definitely brings forth my best effort. I don't usually have a better time playing music in other company, and I couldn't ask to be stuck backstage with nicer, more interesting people. The good time I have contributing to a musical whole has never been better. They let me play 'ukulele on one song, and they asked me to write a string section for another. Why I couldn't write anything worth reading about one of the very best records I've ever been part of, I may never know.

Here's an all-acoustic excerpt from an early, abandoned take of one of the songs we recorded for our "debut" CD. I was tickled that Connie took my suggestion that "Sunday Blues," the Julie London classic, would look great on her. I'll post something from the CD when it finally appears in the spring.

Connie Doolan Quartet - Sunday Blues - Take 3 (conclusion)

2006-01-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

I realize it's esoteric, but here is my favorite 'ukulele oriented web page EVER! We in the 'ukulele community have not been begging for a web news portal that satirizes every embarassing aspect of the 'ukulele community. That has not stopped Alligator Boogie from giving Jon Stewart a little niche market competition. I'll show you a screen cap and you'll get the idea.

2006-01-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

Kishore Kumar sang beautifully, in a language I don't understand. That's probably all to the good. But I love to hear him sing, particularly this sinuous melody. Lounge music could sound like this if it wanted to.

Kishore Kumar - Kuchh To Log Kahenge

kuchh to log kahenge, logaane kaa kaam hain kahanaa
chhodo, bekaar kee baato mein , kahee beet naa jaaye rainaa

kuchh reet jagat kee ayesee hai
har yek subah kee shaam huyee
too kaun hai, teraa naam hain kyaa
seetaa bhee yahaa badanaam huyee
fir kyo sansaar kee baaton se
bheeg gaye tere nainaa

hum ko jo taane dete hai
hum khoye hain in rang raliyon me
hum ne un ko bhee chhup chhup ke
aate dekhaa in galiyon me
ye sach hain zoothhee baat nahee
tum bolo ye sach hain naa

Searching for more to learn about this song, I found an intriguing web log, well-written, easy for a reasonably bright novice to start getting a sense of Hindi culture. The blogger, a successful author of popular books from Mumbai, just used the song title as shorthand for something I don't comprehend, writing nothing about the song itself. Go to that page by clicking here, but after that, I hope you'll explore the whole site. You can learn a lot by accident on the 'net, don't you think?

2006-01-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

Sophia Loren said that despite his wit, charm and tenacity, Peter Sellers did not get lucky. His first wife divorced him all the same in 1961. Perhaps his unrequited longing for the Italian screen star inspired this delightful depiction of wedded bliss, "Bangers and Mash." To make a record this enjoyable I should be so unlucky. (Oh, and George Martin produced it, if I'm not mistaken.)

Bangers And Mash - Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren

2006-01-02T17:21:00.000-08:00

On their way to stardom: Genuine Diamelles

The Genuine Diamelles, San Francisco's psychedelic glee club of the nineties, never put out a recording during their brief and dazzling existence. They opened for Bowie, delighting the headliner and his arena audience alike; they blew thousands of minds at the Hotel Utah, fifty at a time. They were like Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, saying to us when the end was near, "if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."

As the memory of the Diamelles began to fade, the members were engaged in new pursuits: Smelley (see entry for December 14) and Scott on to their new devotion, a "countrypolitan" outfit they called Red Meat, Deb staying close to home after about a decade singing and drumming, and junglebook holing up with his recording decks and a new dossier as DJ Junglebook.

Not too long ago some folks close to the group assembled a two CD retrospective, culling the studio demos and live recordings of this unique quartet of singers. As the set is once again out of print, I felt an urge to share a few impressive performances that really stand the test of time.

The first is a studio demo of four voices on microphones. The second is a live track of four voices with guitar. The third track is a solo performance by band member Scott Young, playing two brass instruments at once. You are liable to shake your head slowly and gape with wonder at one or more of these tracks.

Kashmir - Genuine Diamelles
Sesame Street - Genuine Diamelles
Yesterday - Genuine Diamelles

Web log Of DJ Junglebook
Web site of Red Meat band
Cool old A Capella thread w/ Genuine Diamelles info

2005-12-30T13:33:00.000-08:00

Finland's fabulous Ensemble Ambrosius

Just a quick note as NYE barrels down upon us and I drill myself on the melody and words to my vocal selection, "What Are You Doing New Year's." It's not a bad song; it might be amusing, toward the end of a pious Christmas program, particularly if I were more than just wishfully Jewish. Singing the song *ON* New Year's Eve itself makes no sense to me at all, but predictably enough, no one's asking for my opinion.

One takes one's New Year's Eve employment where one can, and tomorrow mine will be on the outskirts of Sacramento, playing for the contra dancers there. A world away from my old milieu of martinis and neon, the contra dance is proof that nerds need someplace to flirt, too. But I digress.

I recently had the chance to view "Downfall," a great, recent German film about the 1945 fall of Berlin, seen from the vantage of a politically apathetic German stenographer. I can't quite reconcile my keen, lifelong interest in World War Two with not knowing until now that Finland's army did deal a decisive blow to the forces trying to hold Berlin against Russia's invasion. Thank you, Finland.

Ensemble Ambrosius is a septet of Finnish classical musicians whose early-music group scored a minor hit with their transcriptions of music by Frank Zappa. The performances are nearly flawless, yet pulsating with vigor and rich with expression. It would seem these youngsters really LOVED their Zappa. I love what they've done with it. You can buy this record online with US Dollars now.

I said "LOVED" because I'm told they've moved on to concentrate on presenting their own compositions, and may be sore over a dissipation of their popular acclaim. Still, those of us who hoped for so much when the classical world began to play Zappa's music have much, at last, for which to be grateful. Thank you, Finland.

Inca Roads (excerpt) - Ensemble Ambrosius
Ensemble Ambrosius home page

2005-12-21T19:37:00.000-08:00

Old Puppy At SF Ferry Building

The guy standing, who looks like he's wearing his band uniform under duress, is Billy Wilson, and this is his band, Old Puppy. It's an outgrowth of our old duet, UKEBOX, which gives this web log its name. Making a unique supergroup are the added talents of Kurt Stevenson (more about whom in this log's November archive) and the singular Pete Devine on percussion. Pete played hatbox percussion on Billy's CD YUKETIDE: A Ukebox Christmas.

Old Puppy's Christmas list has one thing on it: a weekly regular for four, playing for brunch diners. What do you think, Santa?

(I'll be hawking YUKETIDE down at the busker's spot in front of Peet's on Fourth Street in Berkeley until Christmas is over, from eight to eleven am. The gendarmerie unplug amplifiers, but so far, not in the morning.)

Old Puppy At Nabolom Bakery Christmas Eve Morning
Left to right: Billy Wilson, Steven Strauss, Cynthia Wilson

Old Puppy - Where Or When
YUKETIDE - (Funky) Silent Night

2005-12-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

Jack Teagarden

When it comes to natural, unaffected trombone playing, the certified wonder of the trad jazz world was Jack Teagarden. His lovely and talented sister Norma, a jazz pianist I had the honor of accompanying on string bass a few times in the eighties, was quoted as saying her brother could tick off the harmonic overtones of a thunderclap. That he would think to do such a thing paints a portrait of a man posessed by his awe of music.

Through the generosity of my long time jazz friend "Fiddle Ray" Landsberg I offer for your enjoyment this simmering two-sided release of the swing perennial "Ise A Muggin." Side A gives us the song, a chance to strut some persuasively rhythmic syllables in tribute to the viper's alma mater. Side B is largely taken up with a droll bandstand lesson in, perhaps, gambling, and a demonstration of a number counting game that starts out goofy and goes up from there. If you try to play along with the game it will give your brain a stretch, which will make it harder to keep from laughing. "Somebody sang it and the song was born." Join in, won't you?

(Somebody told me under "religion" in Charlie Parker's passport it said "musician." Do you think this could be true?)

Ise A Muggin - Jack Teagarden

2005-12-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

Young Red Sovine

Here's the only version of this song I've gotten to know. Seems there are a lot of covers of this song; I think somebody said Alec Plankton (?) had a big hit on this one, way back when. For my money this is a Red Sovine song, top to bottom.

Lay Down Sally - Red Sovine

2005-12-08T16:01:00.000-08:00

Eric and Suzy Thompson have been two of the best friends a folkie can have. They've introduced me to some of the best musicians I've ever played with, and they themselves are in the front of that number. Each of them has graced my upcoming album of 'ukulele instrumentals with their unique and distinguished string manipulations, and I'm grateful for their gifts.

In a long-forgotten and enchanted time, when September Eleven was Stacey Street's birthday, I got to participate in the recording of a modest gem of modern jug band performance. Fourth Street Messaround is a CD Eric and Suzy Thompson produced at home with the engineering talents of Brendan Doyle. The band, dubbed The Todalo Shakers, augments the essential Thompson kernel with the musical talents of W. B. Reid on six-string banjo and Frannie Leopold on guitar. All sing. I was brought in with the challenge of using a bow on my string bass to evoke the deep, slippery sound of a big stone jug.

I love the results. Below I've posted a link to the title track, which features a spooky ending that gives me a chill no matter how many times I hear it.

Under that I have a link to Eric and Suzy's home page, and a link to one of their Todalo Shakers pages. Five more Todalo Shakers tunes to listen to when you get there. Be a good sort, then. There you go.

Fourth Street Messaround - The Todalo Shakers

Web site of Eric and Suzy Thompson
Eric and Suzy's Todalo Shakers pages

2005-11-30T01:59:00.001-08:00

I thought it would be a good idea to share an exceptional recording, a rare example of a uke-strumming singer whose appeal is almost entirely musical. He's not pouring on the charm in the manner of the master entertainer, but he's really delivering an adroit and nuanced performnce. He makes it sound mighty easy.

No Wonder She's A Blushing Bride - Art Fowler And His Ukulele

2005-11-29T16:41:00.000-08:00

Beth Custer, composer, clarinet goddess, called this morning while I was at a rehearsal at Max Ventura's. She wanted me to sign a letter she's sending to Kurt Weill's people, explaining that she can't send them the score for my setting of Song Of The Brown Islands (it's about Petroleum!) because I misplaced the pages. So we just met around the corner over mint tea; I signed the letter, and Beth gave me a copy of her clarinet quintet's new CD, "agony pipes and misery sticks." This is track nine of sixteen; on vinyl it would open side two.

Beth's web site is an inspiration to me. Use the link in my right sidebar and check out her awesomeness. When her home page comes up, you hear a subtly funky groove, then she starts singing to you as if from the next pillow, huskily urging you to wake up and piss a ring around yourself because the world is on fire. The subject of the song? OIL.

I didn't even ask her permission to post this track, but it's not as though anyone who personally knew and loved Kurt Weill is going to pay for their kid's tuition with the money they're charging her for playing his tune on her album.

Like a dork, I gave her the URL of this blog before the air kisses. I had her write it down. Hi, Betty.

Das Lied Von Den Braunen Inseln - Clarinet Thing

2005-11-29T14:17:00.000-08:00

Enclosed please find an improvised (mostly) duet for mandolin and 'ukulele, recorded in Berkeley by Derek Bianchi. This comes from "Strings And Wings," Radim Zenkl's CD of improvised duets with players of every kind of stringed instrument Radim could get across from. In my sidebar to the upper right of this page I've placed a link to his home page, which will likely reward your visit.

Don't hate the player: mandolin marvel Radim Zenkl

I'll edit this post soon and fill in some background. There's an angle. For now, though, just groove on the Stravinsky-inspired ancient Eurasia peasant vibe.

Tribal Callings - Radim Zenkl, mandolin, with Steven Strauss, 'ukulele

Radim Zenkl's home page

2005-11-28T19:21:00.000-08:00

San Francisco's Kurt Stevenson is either the most trustworthy person playing beautiful guitar or the greatest guitar player you'd ever want with you in a tight spot. As far as I'm concerned, he is both. He backs up my electric 'ukulele playing so judiciously, you can't tell how hard I'm leaning on him. Recorded by the legendary Bruce Koball in the summer of two thousand four, we assay an obscure Chet Atkins take on a cajun two-step with our hat out in front of the Fourth Street Peet's Coffee in Berkeley (low notes from the 'cello of Mrs. Kerry Parker).

In my right sidebar there's a link to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a project Kurt recently graced with one of his more obviously unusual talents. The reporter barely scratches the surface.

Cajun Stripper - Archer String Band