My Australian ukulele lovin' friend Terry C. has submitted several detailed articles to this humble Humble Uker blog and has received great attention each time. Terry has been a great fan of Cliff Edwards and the music which he masterfully sang while playing the ukulele. YouTube has provided a platform for videos where we can get to know a little about the masters of the past but for a variety of reasons some of the videos are disappearing.
Terry generously shares another rare photo of Ukulele Ike
"Hi Jeff, You may have seen this image before but... It shows Cliff Edwards playing his Martin tenor uke aboard the yacht 'Ukulele Lady' in June, 1947 on the Hudson river N.Y. Perhaps Ike was paid to come along and sing at the maiden voyage? Or maybe it was a publicity stunt for some Hudson River event at the time? Maybe one of your readers can shed some light? Feel free to use on your blog. Regards - Terry"
"Cliff Edwards mentions in an interview here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bngnoZZSQ40 ...that he once owned a 'Stutz Bearcat' - the image above shows the car. It was an expensive machine in its day, for the wealthy only. 'In 1914 it was priced at $2000, about two to three times the cost of the 'T' Model Ford, which cost $550.'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutz_BearcatTerry has also made a request of Humble Uker and you the saviest of uke historians and ukulele memorabilia collectors...
You're aware there are many Ukulele Ike clips on YouTube. Well, one of the most prolific YouTube channels which promotes Ike videos is called 'Good Old Days'. This 'Good Old Days' channel has many Ike videos (among others), probably 50% of the Cliff Edwards videos on YT. Anyway, whoever ran this channel has suddenly and abruptly closed their YouTube account and all those wonderful videos have disappeared overnight! What can I do? Is there any chance any of your readers/subscribers has downloaded any of these Ike videos? -- Terry C.
Two things.
ReplyDeleteFirst: no matter how it's referred to in your source, that's actually a Stutz-Bearcat (rather than the reverse). I know this because it's one of my personal fantasies(tm).
Second: Cliff Edwards is way high in my pantheon of ukulele heroes. I call him "the slowhand of the ukulele" because when you watch the videos of him the vid portion looks like he's hardly trying at all yet the audio portion is full of interesting chord and/or melody movement.
I tend to thrash on the thing like it's trying to bite me. Ike makes it look so simple.
HH: Nice to have a celebrity comment. I noticed that the wikipedia link has it as Stutz-Bearcat too, so I adjusted my wording accordingly. Jeff/HU
ReplyDelete