What inspired you to pick up ukulele?

Calebcat

Calebcat

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As the title say, what inspired you to pick up ukulele, UU?
Also, what song/ jingle/ musician do you think are the iconic symbols of ukulele?
I'm awfully curious to see the responses.
 
Simple-

George Harrison, and

George Harrison
 
For me it was a trip to Hawaii and listening to the music and the ukulele. After being there, drinking Mai Tais...I was hooked!
 
This question actually comes up allot. But, anyway, the artist that inspired me was IZ.
 
My Grandma. In 1965 she and Grandpa went to Hawaii and brought home 2 Martin Ukuleles. She knew Martins because Grandpa had a Martin D28.
I have played it every since but not seriously until the early 2000nds. Now I play almost every day.
 
When I was a little kid I wanted to play guitar, but there weren't many little-kid-size guitars in those days. But there were ukes - so, that's what I got. I didn't stick with it for all that long, and always regretted it. Seeing Janet Klein perform made me decide to pick it up again, because it looked like so much fun - and it is!

As for iconic - I get asked if I can play "Tonight You Belong to Me" a lot (or, more accurately, "that Steve Martin song from The Jerk" is usually how it's phrased) so that must stand out as *the* ukulele song to my generation.
 
I had a friend who was "collecting" Ukes, and one day I saw a purple one in a shop (I love me some purple!) and I brought it and from there have started learning (I also now have two more Ukes, all of them brought within two months!)

I don't know enough to answer the second question :D

This could be a very interesting thread :D
 
I guess since I started this thread, I should answer my question.

I have been playing bass for awhile, and I thought a ukulele was kind of an obscure instrument, so I had to learn it.
Also, I went to a Nevershoutnever concert and Chris played his and I was instantly sold.
 
I guess I started to play because I thought it was a cool sounding and unique insterment, and beacuse I cant play anything else and I thought the Ukulele would be easy to learn!
 
On one recent visit to Hawaii, I stopped and listened to Troy Fernandez playing ukulele in Waikiki. I was blown away, it made me see the uke in a whole new light, this was a seriously cool little instrument. I was hooked and had to have one!

For myself have to say IZ personifies Ukes and the sounds of Hawaii.
1st song I learned was Over the Rainbow/ What a Wonderful World.....IZ style ;)
 
janeray1940 said:
When I was a little kid I wanted to play guitar, but there weren't many little-kid-size guitars in those days. But there were ukes - so, that's what I got.
Click to expand...

this sounds like my story, except when I was in H.S. my folks bought me a guitar. In the 60's guittar was cool, ukulele not so.
A few years ago I rediscovered the ukulele.
 
I bought cheap ukuleles for my kids for Christmas 2009. I decided I should try and tune them and found this place. Haven't put one down since.
 
My father reinspired me when he passed away....I found his ukulele song books while cleaning up his room and at his funeral I asked my cousin to play..
it was the most beautiful uke playing I've ever heard....MM Stan..
 
I was "tricked" into playing! My uke playing friends, Bob and Sue, said they'd like some harmonica back-up and solo work in their ukulele jam-band. So every two weeks we'd get together and jam... for some reason there were always more ukuleles than players around, and not every song required harmonica. One thing led to another and soon I was noodling away on a uke between harmonica bits.

The final hook was set when they invited me to play harmonica for a song they were performing at Toronto's Corktown Uke Jam... "oh, but before we play you might want to learn this song that we play every week". They lent me a beater uke and I was hooked.

Oh, and like any good junky, I got my wife hooked on uke too!
 
I've played drums longer than I have uke. When I started drumming, I was looking for somewhere to play and I found that someone at my church had a youth banjo band. As a rule, everyone who enters the band starts on the ukulele. And the rest, as they say, is history.
 
My wife wanted to learn to play something, and there was a guy at the art gallery she volunteers at playing Uke. She told me I ought to play Uke (I had a Martin just gathering dust) and she wanted to learn banjo...
After seeing what a banjo costs, she got a Uke too, and loves it.
'Course, at this point, she has taken the Martin for her own and the collection grows, as I figure I am a tenor guy anyway.
 
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