Posts Tagged ‘Making Love Ukulele Style’
-
A Hot Day on Center Stage
0June 18, 2015 by admin
Yet another week has gone by before I made it to the park again. A week’s absence reveals great transformations. Golden stelladoro lilies dominate the beds at 72nd Street’s Women’s Gate. A huge lilac-colored spirea bush demarks the transition to small purple celosia, in front of tall, pale pink cleome, backed by dense, deep red roses, their thorny branches rising 8 feet in the air.
Shade engulfed the entrance to Strawberry Fields, where one of the guitarists sang “If I Fell.”
At center stage, under the hot sun, I tuned up and sang “Making Love Ukulele Style.” For almost 30 minutes no one seemed to notice me, then a girl rose from the bench where she was sitting with her parents and put a dollar in my case.
Three girls from Queens did a fine hula, then walked off. Moments later a family from Milwaukee stopped to dance to “The Hukilau Song.” A mom and her 3 daughters knew all the moves; dad took pictures. That was worth a fiver. It had also drawn a crowd.
Some young children got the idea for another few bucks. At a break in the action, a wise guy from Norway asked me, “Did you lose a bet?”
A lady taking video of “Honolulu Baby” dropped a fiver, and a young man, who was just walking by, added his dollar to my case. Walking up to me from the bench, a man in his forties asked if I could play “Tiny Bubbles.” He told me that his father, a Vietnam vet, had done R&R in Hawaii, and had seen Don Ho. “Tiny Bubbles” is not in my repertoire, but I faked it well enough to earn a buck.
A school group from PS 11 in Queens massed at the fountain for a photo. The left flank sat behind my case, so I moved out of the way and waited for them to finish. “How about a song,” one of the teachers shouted to me from the right flank.
I started singing “My Little Grass Shack” and before long another teacher stepped out of the pack and started to hula. I put a lei around her neck and kept singing. Soon some of the students grabbed leis and before long a riot of hulas broke out. I saw one of the parent-chaperones put a fiver in my case, but the kids put in money too, as did the dancing teacher. I quickly lost count, but upwards of $10 came from this group, lifting the day’s total to $28.61.
As the kids from PS 11 moved off, another parent/chaperone offered me a banana. I declined, but I did accept her offer to refill my water bottle. During these hot days on center stage, staying hydrated is vital.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Honolulu Baby, Making Love Ukulele Style, My Little Grass Shack, The Hukilau Song, Tiny Bubbles
-
A Cool Day in May
0May 21, 2015 by admin
With clouds covering the sun, the day started out cool and windy. The heads of all the tulips were blown away, leaving naked stems blowing in the breeze, like masts of a hundred ships in harbor. The guitarist was singing “Let It Be” at the mosaic. I barreled through the crowd, wishing I’d worn a jacket over my rayon aloha shirt. At the fountain, the azaleas had burst forth in thick blooms of white, pink and fuchsia, while Meta huddled against the cold under her shawl on her bench.
“I can’t take this much longer,” she said. “What time is it?” It was not even noon. “Oh, maybe another half hour, at most.”
I set up my case under the maple, but spent my busking time farther along the path, in the sun. A young man dropped 38 cents early on, and a guy walking by added a dollar. Three girls from Columbia Prep danced a fine hula, and a man painstakingly took a picture, none of whom thought to contribute. The doo wop group was at it again; I could see crowds form closer to the Boathouse. With 45 minutes left in my set, I threw everything back in my case and carried it back to the fountain.
Meta was packing up to leave, so I stepped out into the sun, set up again and played center stage for the duration. “Here’s how I spent my winter,” I told her, breaking out into “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” an Eddie Cantor hit from 1930.
A mob of kids from IS 318 in Brooklyn had time for a hula. Their teacher reached into her pocket – not for the first time, I suspect — and found $2 for me.
A familiar face stepped forward to shake my hand. “I listen to you all the time and never gave you anything.” The man, about my age, remedied that with a buck. Two men, not at all familiar but also about my age, stopped to chat. “You’re still here,” one said, “and singing out as well as ever. See this guy,” he turned to his friend, “I came to New York 6 years ago and he was standing right here with that ukulele. How about a song for my friend?”
“Here’s one written by Dean Martin, performed by Arthur Godfrey.” I launched into “Making Love Ukulele Style.” They heard me through, shook my hand and walked off.
Although the clouds had thinned and the sun shone through finally to warm the day, the wind still blew in cold gusts. At one point, my money blew out of my case; at another, a lei ended up in the fountain. A young bearded fellow who had been sitting along the edge of the fountain with his dog pulled it from the drink. He laid it out on the stone seat to dry. “Do you do parties?” he asked. I told him I’d done a kid’s birthday party at an east side pizzeria once. I’d charged $25 for 30 minutes, but the father gave me $45, saying I was a hell of lot cheaper than a clown.
“This would be a baby shower,” he said, “on Long Island.”
I gave him my card and told him to let me know what he had in mind. He gave me a dollar and said he would.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Let It Be, Making Love Ukulele Style, My Baby Just Cares for Me
-
Spring Has Sprung
0April 22, 2015 by admin
Hyacinths, daffodils and pheasant’s eye narcissi are in their glory; white tulips are massed all over the park. Magnolia, pink and white, have already started to drop their petals; gaudy yellow forsythia line the paths. The early trees, elm and maple, are showing green, while finger-sized shoots can be seen on the dogwood, wisteria, cherry, and even the horse chestnut, which appears not to have died again this year despite the blight.
Rakeem, playing “The Girl from Ipanema” on his sax, occupied center stage at Bethesda Fountain, so I moved on to my second favorite spot, beneath a maple on the path toward the Boat House Restaurant. An opaque green fence blocked my view of the lake, and all in all I felt a little hemmed in, but once I tuned up and started my set with “Making Love Ukulele Style” I might as well have stood atop Mauna Kea.
A young couple walked by, stopped to confer, then came back to buy a CD. Mr. Ukulele was bound for Brazil. A man with several cameras around his neck emptied his pockets of $1.07 in change. Perhaps he had taken my picture from afar, but it seemed to me it was money for my music, not my image. An old man broke from his tour group to donate, and a Belgian woman stopped to hula but was hurried away by her male companion.
A fifty-something man wanted to chat. “You look like you’re having a ball,” he said. “I should come out here. You know, I invented a device that makes bubbles as big as a car.”
“There’s a man who does big bubbles by the fountain,” I told him.
“I know that guy. I taught him everything he knows.”
A young man with a fishing rod stopped near me and, leaning his rod against the fence, rolled a joint. Given my own outlaw status, I played on without notice, but when he lit up and clouds of marijuana smoke wafted over the path, I rethought my live-and-let-live policy. People hurried by; one teenager noticed and asked for a puff. Before I could ask him to move on, however, he moved on, dropping a dollar in my case for my forbearance.
I had a family of four doing the hula when Vasiliy came by, pushing his wheeled bass fiddle. A classically trained musician from Ukraine, Vasiliy was heading toward the Arcade to join John Boyd and his choir. He watched dad make a contribution, then asked me, “Is this your first time out?”
I told him I’d been out a few times already. “I played all through the fall,” he said, “up to Christmas. Too cold, this is better.”
The crowds thinned after 1pm. Toward the end of my set I was singing to the birds, specifically, a fat robin pecking the lawn, and a bright red cardinal singing louder than me from a branch of the leafless mulberry tree. Another bird I could not identify, with black body, yellow beak and florescent blue head, danced among the rocks, then flew out of sight as I approached for a closer look.
Category Uncategorized | Tags: Making Love Ukulele Style, The Girl from Ipanema
