Smeck Shorts: Short film clips of Roy Smeck/ by the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum. * *$22.00 This is a series of vintage clips which I highly recommend so you can see what can be done on the uke.
There are two videos for instruction that I've heard are good: The Complete Ukulele Course by Ralph Shaw. (specify VHS, CD-ROM or DVD) $30.00 **and Ukulele Tunes & Techniques: Hawai'ian & American Styles by Bob Brozman. $30.00 This one is for a more advanced player which you may be if you play the guitar well.
The only book I can recommend is my favorite uke chord book. "Treasury of Ukulele Chords" by Roy Sakuma. $10.00 It shows chords for 'C' tuning. If you're using 'D' tuning just transpose the chord names in the book up a whole step.
I've attached words and chords to Crazy Words, Crazy Tune.
I checked with Lightnin' today and he's got cd's of himself playing the uke. I have several of them and they're really good. He said it's ok to contact him directly for those. His email address is Mlightninw@aol.com
There's not much blues ukulele out there, but the sides by Ukulele Bob Williams and Danny Smalls & Ukulele Mays on DOCD 5370 Hokum Blues (1924-1929) entertained me enough that I went down to Scayles and bought myself a Mahalo U320C to plunk around on. And there's always this:
There is some good blues Uke instructional material now out there.
Del Rey - fingerstyle country blues ukulele of tunes we all know and love. I have the DVD and it is good. You need to have some good finger independence to get the most out of the DVD - Del starts off with a very approachable tune (BBQ Bob's Going up The Country) and rapidly advances - which is always the case with Del.
Fred Sokolow has a Blues ukulele book of blues standards which gives two charts for every song in tab, one for chording used to accompany a vocal and the other is chord melody for an instrumental break. Nice.
There is an absolute TON of Blues ukulele on Youtube of course, learning workshops and performance. You just have to sift through it. I'm not sure any of this will sway Blueshome but check out this very credible rendition of "Mississippi Blues"
« Last Edit: October 15, 2009, 08:18:21 AM by Slack »
Yes you can play the blues on the uke, or practically any instrument you care to name, whether it's "in the tradition' is another thing.
But....... I've just received a copy of "Virginia Traditions, Western Piedmont Blues" (it's on the Juke) on which there are 2 tracks by the wonderfully named Lewis "Rabbit" Muse - playing uke. His rendition of "Jailhouse Blues" is wonderful, the other track brings in the dreaded kazoo (oops! see above) but in both cases he proves to be a great picker rather than a strummer.
I agree, Rabbit Muse is wonderful. I think I've mentioned it somewhere here before but there are a number of tracks of him in mp3 format available at the Digital Library of Appalachia. Just search on Rabbit Muse. Several songs, comedy bits, tap dancing and an interview done by a student. The recordings are not great quality, probably done on a cheap tape recorder. But it's great some young student chose to do them back then. Unfortunately, any official Rabbit Muse releases are long out of print, aside from the tracks Phil mentions on the Virginia Traditions record.
I noticed some folks looking for ukulele blues and i've got the premier practitioner of the genre here. An unsung genius and a wonderful human being. Ladies & Gentlemen, Martin Mull gives us some Straight Talk About The Blues on a Ukulele here: