I wanted to create this blog as a place where I can store and retrieve information for future reference. I chose the name Humble Uker Ramblings because I have started out strumming my father's 1950's painted Harmony ukulele. I think that the greatest appeal of the ukulele as "the people's instrument" is it's humble simplicity. My contact email is HumbleUker@gmail.com. I have also been working on a blog for the Baritone Ukulele called Humble Baritonics.
While researching Shin’s information I found some Herb Ohta YouTube videos. If you enjoy the embedded videos be sure to click on the two others that I couldn’t embed for some great vintage footage. One of my first ukulele CD’s was Lyle Ritz Herb Ohta A Night of Ukulele Jazz Live at McCabb’s. That album opened my eyes to more possibilities on the ukulele, chord melodies.
I am always networking when it comes to the ukulele. I have been selling items on eBay to pay for a custom ukulele from Mike DaSilva. I had some Hawaiian and Ukulele CD’s for sale and I was contacted by Shin Kawahata of Toyama, Japan, who wanted to know if I would ship to Japan. I said sure I would treat him fairly and only charge the actual postage.
I went to our local UPS store with my 9 CD’s and showed them the smallest box. They quoted me $55 for a U.S. mail rate. Ouch! I asked, "What if the box was smaller?" (I thought I would remove the CD’s and paperwork to get it as small as possible. They told me the U.S. mail rate would then be $44. Then after Shin and I agreed on the postage I went to the local post office and was only charged $11.95! Shin was happy to see a big refund.
I asked him to send me a picture and some info about his club. He told me that he likes Herb Ohta Sr. (known as, Ohta-san, in Japan) He sent me the picture at the top of this post and a link to his club in Japan. The link was all in Japanese, so I just kept clicking and found some pages that looked interesting and I was able to make some sense of the content.
While researching Shin’s information I found some Herb Ohta YouTube videos. If you enjoy the embedded videos be sure to click on the two others that I couldn’t embed for some great vintage footage. One of my first ukulele CD’s was Lyle Ritz Herb Ohta A Night of Ukulele Jazz Live at McCabb’s. That album opened my eyes to more possibilities on the ukulele, chord melodies.
