A tougher (opinion) piece of Sun City sculpture

Beatles, Zepplin, Santana, blues stuff. Generally nothing earlier than the Beatles except for the blues. I’ve only been playing uke about a year so I’ve had to learn all new chords and playing style. I had a long hiatus of playing nothing. Of course uke shares many similarities to guitar so it’s not all new. The memorization of songs is the biggest challenge. A 500 song list is quite impressive. How do you do that?

I’m trying to be a better uke player than I was at guitar. I grew up playing and singing. Musical family of piano and guitar and three part harmonies with my sisters. I was often the only willing singer in the group of friends/guitar players (not that I’m so great a singer, I’m not) so my playing suffered because of it. Often I just sang unless I was alone. I haven’t played and sung with anyone for a long time now but it’s not a foreign concept...at least in my head.

 

Hmmm. There are some alternate uke tunings but it’s not common like in guitar. My BFF says DADGAD is an awesome tuning.

 

BFF? For many years all he played was DADGAD, it allows him, for example, to play bass lines on the open strings, good for a duo, but now he usually brings along three or even four guitars for different occasions including a recent cigar box guitar give to him by his son for X-mas. It makes an awesome dobro - lap steel slide guitar. And that pretty much only works it there is another rhythm player.

The large song list is a combination of what can be done using a non-luddite devise that can store and quickly bring up lyrics, which now come with a bracket that clips onto a mike stand, and his amazing ability to recall and quickly figure out chord patters. I just follow where he goes. He also has a good ability to re-arrange songs, so for example, we do a killer version of the Eagles "Take It To the Limit" in 4/4 time instead of their waltz time, and have turned "Brown Eyed Girl" into 3/4 time explaining, "This song was written by a 30 year old remembering what it was like to be 20. Our version is a 60 year old remembering the same thing." Beatles I can see, but you play Santana on a uke?

 

The Maricopa County Library has (to me) an impressive collection of ukulele song books. The Sun City Library is part of the system and can pull any of them in. Looking over it I am surprised (probably an indication of how out-of-touch I am with the heartbeat of Sun City, as played on a ukulele) at how many of them are checked out. "The 50s for Ukulele", for instance. Here is a link, I am not sure if it will work. Or not. https://mcldaz.org/search/searchres...&sort=MP&limit=TOM=*&query=&page=1&searchid=2

 

Europa is beautiful on the uke, fingerstyle of course, not only chords. In fact, Santana brought a well-know uke player on the stage once to play with him. I learned her arrangement. Zeps Stairway to Heaven, the Rain song, and many others are also good on uke. They have to be adapted because of the four strings instead of 6 and fewer octaves. Some songs require use of pedals to get the distortion, like guitar. Mostly they work. Finger style requires more memorization because its mostly picking individuals notes/strings mixed with a some chords. Some good players use the techniques where it sound like rhythm and lead at the same time. The state of uke playing is at quite high level now, among those who can. This guy helped make it mainstream. Original song of his. Starting about 3:35 you will understand how it can get to Santana & Zeppelin styles like a guitar. I'll never get anywhere close to his level of playing.



or his Bohemian Rhapsody for something quieter



and here's the Europa version I (try my best to) play

 

I read you can also check-out a ukulele at the Library. They have 6 for loaning out. Probably soprano ukes. I play a tenor, mostly with a low G, which is a bit larger and a deeper sound. Ukes are fun.

 

Pretty kick-A stuff. Are these folks mostly playing tenor ukes? Here is the thing. I will not be the next Earl Palmer or Hal Blaine and you might not be the next Shima . . . . . . . . . but so what? There is no good reason I know of to be the next anything than myself, and actually, one is probably more than enough. You probably know Izzy Kakamamalala . . . .something's version of Over the Rainbow and Wonderful World. Done in one take at 3 a.m. I'm pretty sure you won't be the next Izzy either.

 

Yes tenors. Mostly with a low G, which makes them sound more like guitars than the typical high G string. Some songs sound better with a high G though so people use both.

 

This thread has wandered far afield, so i might just as well take it into another county. For anyone who loves GREAT MUSICALITY, i encourage you to take the trip to Barleen's Arizona Opry in Apache Junction. We first won a trip there years back and i hated the idea of leaving Sun City to see an "Opry." Since that initial freebee we have been back numerous times and never left disappointed. We almost always bring friends and they too are stunned just how good the show is.

With a dozen performers taking the stage during the course of the show, the variety of instruments is staggering. True performers in every sense of the word and honestly for a dinner show, the food is better than just tolerable. It's good. They only perform there winter months as during the summer they go north and perform at a couple of other venues. I seldom guarantee anything, but in this case, you will be blown away by just how good the show is. We enjoy the variety shows, simply because you get a better showcase at how gifted these musicians are.

 

This thread, and most that I get involved in, certainly all that I start, are part of what has been termed "the endless conversation." it has no beginning it has no ending, it has no interruptions, no tangent. it just goes on and on. So, Bill, is that Opry event fronted by a guy named George S . . . . . ......? Because there were about 20 CDs by him at one of the local thrift stores. I got one, put it i my car CD player and it named there and i eventually had to get another CD player for my car. So , , , , , , , , , , ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

Damn carp, in the my past mega posting days we used to call it synchronicity. As we weaved through threads and the stories of our lives, things would connect and then interconnect. Seemingly non-related topics became one by crossing paths with no apparent reason. Watch this craziness unravel.

Up until last Saturday, i didn't know George Staerkel from Adam Levine. I did know one of the Barleen twins was married to a guy that was the musical director and she divorced back in 2015. The first time we were there (in 2016) the tour operator we sat next to told us the show was way better than it was in years passed. They had brought in lots of new talent and it made a huge difference. We loved every minute of it and were hooked.

So here's the rest of the story. George Staerkel went to Mesa and opened a dinner theater called the Silver Star (i think it was originally the Desert Palm). He brought some of the musicians along with him. I know this now because on Saturday of this past week, we went to the Silver Star for the afternoon show. I watch a friends house when he is back in Canada and they had been there the year before and invited us to see this great show.

We went and frankly were disappointed. The venue was nice, the buffet edible but the show lacked any real energy. The only standout was a guy filling in from Vegas as a guest artist.Towards the end of the show they said something about a guy named George Staerkel, but no back story with it. We came home and i started searching GOOGLE and George Staerkel and darned if the he didn't drop dead while performing on stage on January 4, 2018. No wonder there was a state of gloom over the theater and the performers.

He was a big bald headed guy who played 18 different instruments and was the energy behind the show. Losing him was a killer and who knows what will happen when the season ends.

 

Yes. George Staerkel it was. There were CDs of him playing Rock & Roll, other where he was doing Country, then organ favorites and I think even a tuba one. Sorry to learn of his passing. As I recall there were some Barleen Twins CDds too. Then some AZ Opery ones too. it was the "Our Hands, Gods Work" place that just moved. One day I went in and all the CDs were gone. I asked about it and it turned out that someone had bought them all and sent them to our troops in the Middle East. I tried to imaging what a bunch of 20 years olds were going to do with a complete collection of the Sun City Choir from 1994 through 2008, the Sun City Big Band at the Sun Bowl (2004-2007) and of course all that George Staerkel. Never did come up with an answer.

 

RIP George Staerkel. Here he is playing the ginormous contrabass

 

Imagine that and a ukulele in the same band!
There is a band backing a live Taj Mahal album that one some occasions uses four tubas. That is a close as I can get.