George Harrison: why everyone should play a ukelele
“You can pick up a ukulele and anybody can learn to play a couple of tunes in a day or even a few hours.,” said Joe Brown, mainstay of the UK’s skiffle sound in 1962 the man NME readers thought the ‘Top UK Vocal Personality’. “And if you want to get good at it, there’s no end to what you can do.” George Harrison, famously of the Beatles loved the instrument. “[George] He loved music, not just rock and roll…. He’d go crackers, he’d phone me up and say ‘I’ve got this great record!’ and it would be Hoagy Charmichael and all this Hawaiian stuff he used to like. George was not a musical snob.”
In 1999, Harrison wrote a small tribute to the ukelele. “Everyone I know who is into the ukulele is ‘crackers,’” said George, “you can’t play it and not laugh!”
Joe Brown closed the Harrison tribute concert at Royal Albert Hall with a uke version of “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” and Paul McCartney remembered his friend in 2009 by playing Something on a ukulele at New York’s Citi Field. He told the audience: “Whenever you went round George’s house, after dinner the ukuleles would come out and you’d inevitably find yourself singing all these old numbers.”
Spotter: Open Culture
Posted: 17th, July 2017 | In: Celebrities, Music Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
