If you are a memeber of UU you will know that a baritone is not a proper ukulele.

This is actually a fun song to play.  You don't have to use the falsetto voice.

Tiptoe Through The Tulips Al Dublin & Joe Burke 1929

Intro: C / A / |Dm / G7 / :||

[C] Tiptoe [A] to the [Dm] window [G7]
By the [C] window,[C7] that is [F] where I'll [Cdim] be
Come [C] tiptoe [A] through the [Dm] tulips [G7] with [C] me [A][Dm][G7]

Oh, [C] tiptoe [A] from the [Dm] garden [G7]
By the [C] garden [C7] of the [F] willow [Cdim] tree
Come and [C] tiptoe [A] through the [Dm] tulips [G7] with [C] me [F][C][C7]

Knee [F] deep in [Em] flowers we'll [A7] stray
We'll [B7] keep the [Dm] showers a[G7]way

And if I [C] kiss you [A] in the [Dm] garden, [G7]
In the [C] moonlight [C7] will you [F] pardon [Cdim] me?
And [C] tiptoe [A] through the [Dm] tulips [G7] with [C] me [A][Dm][G7]

Tiny Tim 1957.jpg  •  65KB

You folks are ha ha 😄 funny. 

Me, too; me, too!

TERRY, can I quote you....more smiles on this one....aloha, irene

Terry I love the way you look at it here.  I'm going to incorporate your "first time in my life I've been...." attitude towards my age from now on. Thank you! 

Truer words never spoken, Terry! 

I just CRACKED UP LAUGHING on these posts and read them all.  The best book I've found on the UKULELE is written by Jim Beloff.   The info is a gathering of many years of research.   The name of Ukulele is like this.  When the Hawaiian's saw the Quatro being played by the Portigee folks that came to Hawaii said in Hawaiian of course, "wow, he's playing so fast it's like a jumping flea!!"  Uku=lice lele=fast. A type of Tenor ukulele was popular in a "tenor banjo" or a banjolele in Hawaii 1910-1930.  You can find 'em on sale on ebay.   I've made 7 of them.  These were also called TENOR BANJO'S.   They are not as loud as a big banjo.....and fit in with Hawaiian music.  The Tahitians still have as their national instrument a banjo uke.  When that was popular, England and other places made these banjoleles. plunty of them on ebay now. ha, I'm going to check out the UU site.   sounds really fun.  My mother had a Martin ukulele and played it in the car while I was growing up with my brother.   My brother has that ukulele.  He took it to Martin Guitar co. to see what it was worth.  He about fell over....$55,000.   He still has the original case.  FYI....there are more ukulele players in the United Kingdom then all of the USA and that includes Hawaii.  We lived in the islands for over 30 years.   aloha, irene

Ariane, you're so welcome! Your lovely story made me smile :-) Thank you for sharing that!

Oh Bob - you made such a nice present to me with the upload of Tiny Tim-Tiptoe Through The Tulips!

I heard it when I was a child in the radio here in Germany and I loved it. It was played by a radio station (if I remember correctly every Friday) early in the morning when I had a homey (gemütlich) breakfast with my father before he had to go to work and I to school.

I have never heard it since then and never knew who sang it - and now it brings the best childhood memories back to me - thank you, thank you, thank you! I have tears in my eyes...

Scent and music can be very evocative 

Ariane

All this Ukulele talk- I can't get Tiny Tim out of my head; "Tip-toe thru the tulips..."

Definitely Laughing Out Loud over your dulcimer-playing KY moonshiner, Lisa.  My best market for gigs is here in Michigan which has a doozie of rum-running type history from Prohibition, so my post-Prohibition reporter looking back at it will have more than enough to cover looking at that.  My trick right now is organizing it in a compact format, there's so much available to say.  I figure the Ooo-koo-lay-lay will help me keep it light and entertaining.  I want to focus on how it turned normally law-abiding people into bootleggers and made drinking the opposite of what was intended.  (I plan to start with a W.C.T. U. song -- learned years ago as KY's Carrie Nation came to Holly, MI to smash the bars and for many years there was an annual Carrie Nation festival and pageant.)

You and Terry have convinced me to stay with a tenor.

Heeheehee... us profezional editers love it anytime we can solve a problem by proofreading!  It happens so seldom...

As Ken mentioned, the Hawaiian pronunciation is different from what we typically say on the mainland.  Ooo-koo-lay-lay (like the cow says "Moo").  If you pronounce it like a Hawaiian it's easier to spell.  This is a good place for me to admit I typed "pronounciation" and would not have noticed except for the spellcheck squiggly line ;-) 

I've been on the UU forum so long, I don't remember whether it was hard for me to get approved.  "Junior Member" merely means you haven't posted much yet.  Beware UAS (ukulele acquisition syndrome) -- there are a lot of enablers on that site. 

Lyon & Healy marketed a "tenor ukulele" in 1923.  No baritone is documented before 1948, though you could plausibly argue about tiples and taro-patch guitars.  The classic 1920s sound is a soprano uke with re-entrant tuning gCEA or aDF#B.  Any uke would pass for most audiences.  I've pulled off some ren faire living history with my MD that only looks like a scheitholt if you're not a scheitholt expert -- because the only scheitholt experts I've ever met are MD players who would never out one of their own!  I have to assume there are very few people who would notice a bari uke is out of period -- and they are probably fellow travelers.

Don't worry about matching your singing voice to the uke.  If anything, contrast is good.  I sing soprano and prefer a uke that can fill in my missing low-end resonance, like a concert Fluke or a warm mahogany tenor.  My alto-singing friends often prefer a bright soprano/concert uke that adds some ringing high tones. 

Please keep us in the loop about your prohibition storytelling.  That sounds like a blast!  You know... you could add a character who makes moonshine in Kentucky, fends off the revenuers and plays... a mountain dulcimer!

I could swear we've been talking about ukuleles recently on FOTMD, maybe off in a group discussion that not everybody sees.  There are a bunch of uke players around here.  Welcome to the underground.

Your post was worth while. Ukes are fun and there's a lot of love for them. Others might find interest in the Ukulele Underground forum too.

Thanks, Ken, Susie, & Terry.  I was wondering if this and my earlier trying to get started was worth posting.  Just figured it would be worthwhile for someone, even though it's an"Other Instrument."

Terry, you gave me the rationale I tried to explain to my husband about why I bothered.  Dunno if you know if the baritone uke was around by the early 30s or not.  My voice is low enough I often sing an octave lower.  Probably I'm better keeping the tenor for that 20s sound.

Glad you finally made it in to UU! I've been a member there for quite a few years. It's actually a fun and friendly site. But yes, it's ukulele!

The funny story I have is about a friend of mine who is a mandolin player, of professional level. He is awesome. I was playing bluegrass with him at a neighborhood get-together (me on guitar) and a young boy commented on his instrument. He said it sounded like a ukulele. Boy, if looks could kill. So NEVER tell a mandolin player his instrument sounds like a ukulele!

Lois, thanks for sharing your story. Having recently visited Hawaii, I am aware of how ukulele is pronounced differently there (and perhaps correctly). How we say a word often influences how we spell it. I am developing an interest in the ukulele. I have scraps of wood left over from building four hammered dulcimers and wondered what to do with it. I found a plan for a standard size ukulele. I discovered that i could use the leftover wood to make a few ukuleles. I am now working on building six of them; three grandsons, son-in-law, son, and myself. I don't know where it will lead, but it is fun working on them.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

This discussion started on another location here,  A Fretter Box , but I promised to post eventually the story of it here.  There are some resources included and, storyteller that I am, a story, too.  It all started because I'm developing a storytelling program about Prohibition and that era's hot instrument was the ukulele.

As I write this, a 14 year-old just won the national spelling bee.  I never went into spelling bees beyond my own schools, but am generally a good speller.  In years of proofreading my own writing and that of others I've always said it's easier to proofread somebody else's writing than your own.  I blame that overconfidence for what happened. 

There's a site called Ukulele Underground , which is probably the ukulele equivalent of FOTMD and I now remember why I didn't join there right away.  Their registration and even Contact form has a "random question" which is always "What is this forum about?"  I tried the uke; ukelele; playing ukelele and kept getting rejected with "The answer given for the random question was incorrect."

This time I was determined and sent an email to an active performing member explaining the problem and asking him to pass it along to a moderator.  He didn't know who the site moderators might be, but gave me a name to contact.  That, too, required some detective work as the name wasn't that uncommon and, added to that, the person recommended lived in Chicago where several people had that name.  Eventually I reached the correct person and was told who the moderator/owner of the site was.  I passed along my tale of woe to the owner and was given advice to get registered.  (None of these three deeply involved ukulele players, after my repeating to them "I tried the uke; ukelele; playing ukelele and keep getting rejected with 'The answer given for the random question was incorrect.' " noticed my typo.)  Even as I write this I find my tendency to write uk e lele instead of uk u lele persists.

Thank heavens for Lisa Golladay's proofreading skills!  She caught it and also suggested I try  http://www.doctoruke.com for my desired Twenties Music.  She's right on that, too, and, if it weren't playing a uke, I might have listed how it has kept me busy this past month working on "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" -- a piece I already love on guitar, so it's been fun adapting it for a new instrument.  Dr. Uke gives chords, lyrics, and an audio recording all together.

Back to the U.Underground doorkeeper.  I reapplied, this time correctly spelling ukulele and was again rejected.  The message said because I might be a spammer!  The message also said if I believe this was in error to write using their Contact.  O.k., I wrote, spelling correctly.  Somehow I was admitted (probably on probation?) as a Junior Member.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful I find myself contrasting their site with FOTMD and even further as I'm an admin on a storytelling network and sympathize with the problem of keeping out spammers.  FOTMD handles this so much better than the uke site.  A few years ago Strumelia even gave me an IP locator to help identify some of the more obvious spammers.  My own admin work also makes me sympathetic to poor spellers and that site also has many members for whom English is their second language.  This just shows the inflexibility of a computerized gatekeeper.

Further reviewing FOTMD vs. U.U., their welcomes are posted in offiffiffic'al Sticky Notes for you to find.  FOTMD has members who give new members a few posts of welcome notes.  Yes, it takes up space on the Timeline and we've all seen it many times, but for newbies it is indeed Welcoming. 

Dunno how many members here have an interest in ukuleles.  The last post in this forum about them was five years ago.  Speaking as someone who knows the mountain dulcimer is my first love, BUT have a Folk Musical Instrument Petting Zoo, I have learned to never say "never."  That includes the dulcimer, at one time I was sure I would never want one...but that's another story.

There are other ukulele resources you can find with a search engine, but just remember: Call 'em Ukes, Ukuleles, but never Ukeleles!