Playing the songs of yesterday

It's always a great pleasure to me to pick up a song from 70-80 years ago and be able to play it using the ukulele chords arranged over the music. It's frustrating and annoying to find them incorrect, the changes awkward and the timing sloppy. But for me it's all about playing the music.

Many of the songs I've scanned from that era are poorly arranged. Some minimally so, and a few tweaks can make them playable. Others are simply awful and essentially unplayable as arranged. There are only a few trustworthy arrangers whose work is usually playable without modification - May Singhi Breen topping that short list (although she was unable to get the American Federation of Musicians to recognize the ukulele as a real musical instrument, she continued to arrange popular songs for the uke and was a well-known performer on the uke).

I'm never sure if the problem lies with me, as interpreter, or in an essentially poor arrangement. I think I have enough savvy from playing music for four-plus decades, that I can rule out my own modest talents some of the time, but other times the arrangements just mystify me.

One of the problems lies in how we hear music today. We have different rhythms and chord agreements in our music from what was played in, say, 1928. Chord patterns or rhythmic arrangements that were popular in the Flapper era may sound odd, even unmusical, to modern ears. There seems to have been a lot more focus on the singer than the music, too.

One of the biggest changes since then is that many, many songs in the 1920s opened with an introduction that was stylistically, and often tonally, different from the refrain. In many cover versions, these introductions have been dropped. However, I try to learn them as well because they often provide a story line that sets up the refrain, like in Jeepers Creepers or Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

There are also social attitudes that strike us as atavistic, sexist or even racist. It's hard not to feel uncomfortable working through the lyrics of some of these songs. If I like the tune, I try to think of ways to rewrite them, to change the lyrics to something more palatable to current political and social correctness. But some songs are simply incorrigible.

The challenge today is to not merely try and play a song that has not had air time since the 1920s or 30s, but to present it in a manner that is both recognizable and uniquely your own. Finding a performance on a site dedicated to putting old 78 music into MP3 format or a YouTube video of the song, certainly helps give you a platform from which to start.

Another, minor, problem is tuning. Today ukulele players generally play soprano, concert and tenors tuned GCEA (with the G usually an octave higher for 're-entrant' tuning) and baritones as DGBE. Some people still tune ADF#B, which was popular in vaudeville days. But the song books and sheets offer numerous other tunings, many of which are not easily accessible because they require restringing. My recommendation is to either choose to play the chord shapes shown, and ignore the key, or to transpose the keys and play them on your current tuning. My usual preference is to play the shapes, but if you want to play along with a recording, you may need to transpose or use a capo.

One thing you'll discover with these old songs is that the sentiments are familiar. Lyrics have not changed as much as musical tastes. The language may differ, and popular slang comes and goes, but the songs are still mostly about love, friendship, passion, loss, romance, longing and relationships. There are some about current events and issues, of course, and novelty songs, too, which may not make the transition to modern times as well. But the majority of the music has the same emotional themes we hear on the radio today.

For most of us, the biggest thing is to develop some proficiency in our ukulele playing. The ability to strum, change chord quickly, keep a beat are all crucial skills. I cover ukulele playing at greater depth on my ukulele site. For newcomers, especially to this vintage music, the key to mastery is simple: practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. There is no substitute for it.

PS. Here's a link to a YouTube video I made doing I Ain't Lazy, I'm Just Dreamin'.