Posts Tagged ‘The Hukilau Song’
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November 4, Really
0November 5, 2015 by admin
The post-marathon park seemed out of season. Annuals were torn up; past peak, many trees were bare. Despite the 70 degree temperature, people were wrapped in scarves and sweaters. The cowboy was in his proper place in the northwest corner of the plaza, allowing me the uncontested center stage.
An Australian family started me off. One daughter wanted to hula, the other hung back to watch. After a verse of “The Hukilau Song” I invited the second daughter to reconsider, and soon the sisters were dancing in tandem, clomp-clomp right, clomp-clomp left. Dad got the picture, and I got a fiver.
A woman with a huge camera gave me a dollar and asked for a photo. Before she could get me in focus, a man with an equally huge camera took his photo from another angle.
An old man lurked, watching and listening first from the bench, then from the lip of the fountain, then back at the bench. After a half dozen songs, he approached with a dollar and asked, “Who besides you and me has ever heard of these old songs? ‘Tiptoe through the Tulips,’ ‘All of Me,’ ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,’ ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me.’ Great job,” he added, returning to the bench to hear some more.
Mothers with small children took advantage of the warm weather. Two moms, with 3 kids between them, let them run freely, which eventually led them to me. I folded the leis in half so they would not trip over them. The 4 year old girl danced. The 2 year old boy, alert to the fact that people were watching, stood stock still, not wanting to call any more attention to himself. The third child clung to his mom’s leg. The dancers were each given a dollar for me.
While all this was going on, Marcel and Maggie came down the path and into the plaza. A 70-something woman, introduced as Marcel’s wife and Maggie’s mom, told me how cute it was to see little kids dance, and how much Maggie enjoyed the ukulele.
As a woman walked by, our eyes met just as I got to the lyric in “Sunday,” “…so sweet, the moment I fell for you.” She doubled back and dropped some change in my case. “You got me,” she said.
A small girl broke away from a group photograph at the fountain and handed me a dollar. Two women from the bench, an 80-something and a 60-something, who had been chatting through my performance, approached with a dollar too.
Counting my take at the end of the session, $12.35, I sent a silent prayer of Aloha into the warm blue sky. What’s weird is that this unseasonably warm weather is likely to reprise tomorrow, as am I.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: All of Me, I Can't Give You Anything But Love, My Baby Just Cares for Me, Sunday, The Hukilau Song, Tiptoe through the Tulips
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The Man from the Movie
0October 22, 2015 by admin
In addition to the sights and sounds of autumn, there is the smell of the ginkgo tree. As I entered Strawberry Fields, it hit me in the face like a bag of compost.
The cowboy was packing up when I got to Bethesda Fountain; center stage was uncontested. The park was filled with people on yet another 70+ degree day. On the bench opposite, 2 elderly men were sketching. After a few songs, as they got ready to leave, one of them, shorter than me and slightly bent, with thick, curly, salt and pepper hair that may have been a toupee, came forward and handed me two $5 bills. Though I won’t say for certain, I think it was Tony Bennett. He said, “Very nice.”
A young Asian man, sitting on the rim of the fountain, gave me $1 when he left.
A young boy and older man, perhaps an old father or young grandfather, rested on the benches. When I finished the first verse and started the chorus of “Tiptoe through the Tulips,” the man perked up with recognition. At the start of the second verse, where Romeo and Juliet are used as transitive verbs, the man reached for his wallet and sent the boy over to me with a dollar.
A 2-year-old girl, dressed head to foot in orange velour, toddled over. I twisted the lei to double it, so it didn’t drag on the ground while the girl worked her chubby knees up and down in what we’ll call a hula. Another little girl wanted to go to the hukilau too, and soon the dancing babies drew a nice crowd of people, who ooh-ed and ah-ed as they took photos, a few of whom thought to tip the ukulele man.
Two young men each gave me a dollar. “Good job,” said one of them.
“Have you got time for a hula today?” The girl of 6 or 7 was just waiting to be asked.
“Yes,” she said, wide-eyed. With the lei around her neck, there was no stopping her. She ran and leaped in a wild, ecstatic burst of energy. She even did a few cartwheels. I asked her dad, when he handed over a dollar, if any of the furniture in his house was still in one piece, recalling the wreakage I created as a child jumping on beds and tumbling from sofa to floor in my own gymnastic enthusiasms.
Over the crest of the path came Marcel, with Maggie the dog. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen them. “We’ve been coming out later,” Marcel told me.
“Me too,” I said, which is why, of course, I was seeing them now.
With about 5 minutes left in my set, 2 men got off the bench and put $2 in my case. “Where are you from?”
“Slovenia.”
“I believe you are my first Slovenians,” I told them, shaking hands.
As they walked away, one of them turned to me and said, “You look like the man from the movie.”
Since I had no idea what he was talking about, I was forced to respond, “I suppose I do.”
Category Uncategorized | Tags: The Hukilau Song, Tiptoe through the Tulips, Tony Bennett
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Center Stage
0October 16, 2015 by admin
Getting another late start, I decided to sit quietly on a bench and wait for the cowboy to go home. With the days remaining in the season growing ever fewer, I wanted my time at center stage and, by God, I would have it. Chatting with some tourists sitting near me, I learned that the Boyd family singers were wonderful, and that the cowboy played all their favorite songs. Go figure.
I opened with “Making Love Ukulele Style.” As I played, I detected a twang in my low-G string, a wire wrapped item that hasn’t been changed all year. Experience tells me this string will soon snap. Upon examination, I can’t find any fraying, which usually begins directly over one of the frets. My challenge now is to finish the season, so I can change all the strings at once in January.
A young man stopped in front of me to take a picture. Unlike practically every photographer who’s pointed a camera, cellphone or iPad at me, this one coughed up a buck.
“Have you got time for a hula today?” Three older women talked it over, and one of them, Diane, started shaking her hips. “Do you know any birthday songs?” It was Diane’s 80th birthday. I put a lei around her neck and sang “Happy Birthday” while one of them shot video. “What about that hula?” the videographer called out. Diane was game and did a slow, yet stylish, hula. The women were from Dallas, where, I reminisced, I had gone ice skating at the indoor rink at the Galleria shopping center when the outside temp was 107. When they left, with shouts of Aloha echoing through the fountain, I found a crisp fiver in my case.
Two blond teenagers were encouraged by their mom to dance. During the intro to “The Hukilau Song,” brother and sister danced in unison, but with the start of the verse, sister went free-style, literally dancing circles around her brother. A laughing mom handed me $3.
A 30-something woman all in black walked slowly past me, and without breaking stride tossed 2 quarters in my case. By the time I got to the end of a breath-line in my song, it was too late to ask her to dance. A 40-something man gave me a dollar, saying, “Keep on playing, man.”
“Do you like ukulele music?”
“Not particularly, but I like what you’re doing.”
It was another great day for wedding photos. I counted 6 brides in my 90 minutes at the fountain. As is my wont, I broke into “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” every time a bride showed up. Rarely am I rewarded; most of the time the wedding couple doesn’t have a clue what I’m singing. Today, however, a photographer, 1 of 4 that were assembled to take pictures of a particularly large wedding party, gave me a dollar, bringing the day’s total to a respectable $11.50.
Packing up, Kate, who plays the viola for John Boyd, came by to ask if her friend on the alto sax, who had set up 180 degrees from me, with taped accompaniment, was interfering with me. “Not anymore,” I said, “I’m done for the day.” Fact is, I’d heard him between numbers, but not at all while playing, my measure of when buskers are too close together. “But thanks for your concern,” I added. “See you tomorrow.”
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Making Love Ukulele Style, The Hukilau Song
