Alabamy bound...

A lovely friend has been regaling me with stories about her ukelele group. She is clearly an accomplished player, and my instructions have been to watch several performances of various bands, and these have been a delight!

Many years ago, I always wanted a ukelele, a good friend owned the first ukelele in the school! He played it with a green felt plectrum, and I was more and more envious, and used to make my own sort of stringed instruments with any old plywood etc I found in dad's garage, but they rarely worked! Eventually I earned enough hop-picking money to buy a real guitar, several years later! I think it cost £7.0.0, and I remember having a choice of just two instruments in a music shop in Queens Road, Hastings. The other one was around £5.10.0 and wasn't that well made...

Fast forward to the recent Christmas...

One of my grandchildren was give quite a nice instrument, and on the Big Day, my first job after locking up the car and placing one foot inside the house, was to tune this little chap! (Senora O'Blene had given one of her nephews a ukelele back in 1972, and he played it incessantly, whether it was in tune or not! It had cost 50 pence, and was his 'best ever present')!

So my job was to hold this tiny instrument, while the big eyes of the grand daughters drilled into my soul, and I tuned it to the top four strings of a guitar - D,G,B,E. That was my first mistake... We did get some sort of sound out of it anyway, until other interests of the day sort of took over, like a huge lunch, and the ukelele was forgotten for a while, although we'd scoured the net for advice!

Back in the nineteen-fifties, we had our first television installed. It had two channels, the BBC and the relatively new ITV, and we were all cock-a-hoop. A great programme presenter back then was Jack Jackson, and in fact he was a really original disc-jockey, putting 78s in their place as well as the new 45s! He often recorded his programmes with his cat on his lap, and indeed continued to be very funny for many years, with intermittent shorts of fabulous humour and fun, as well as being a great musician himself! I just loved his radio shows!

Now, I am sure - yay POSITIVE,  that in those heady years, with me yearning for stardom on a ukelele, or just about anything with strings, (except a violin of course), Jack Jackson presented a band on stage singing a song called something like, 'She was my lover'. They were all my age, and played ukeleles in grand splendour, and my dad had called me through to watch these chaps! They had been introduced as 'The Imps', and all I can find is a Derby-based band from the 1960s, with the same name, but it certainly wasn't them (Mr A.K. Haart may well remember these gentlemen...)!

Of course, I was utterly hooked, and no doubt, several days of 'hump' would have been the norm with this frustrated and expectant David Gilmour champing at the bit!

Back to the future, or now as it happens, I've found the true tuning of a ukelele, and of course, am still getting all muddled up and playing pretty awful stuff! I must ask my friend for more advice...

But those Imps sure could play...

(Note - the title of this rather long post comes from the funniest TV show ever produced - 'Not the Nine o'Clock News', where a Southern gentleman is strolling along, playing a ukelele, singing these words, and suddenly coming across a sign which points to Alabamy being totally the opposite direction! Still hilarious every time I see it)!