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One day in early 1992, Jim Beloff found a Martin tenor ukulele at the Rose Bowl flea market in Pasadena, California. The find changed his life forever.
He bought the ukulele and started looking for more information about it. There wasn’t much.
If the ukulele was remembered at all outside of Hawaii, it was because of Tiny Tim’s 1968 rendition of “Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips With Me.”
Beloff, who was associate editor of Billboard magazine in Los Angeles, bought everything he could find – mostly dusty, old How to Play the Ukulele books from the 1950s.
He taught himself to play the instrument, began writing songs, and continued to search for textbooks, sheet music, old records, and other ephemera while touring for Billboard. Unable to find what he was looking for, Beloff wrote and published Jumpin’ Jim’s Ukulele Favorites later that year. It was the first in a series of textbooks and songbooks. And so flea market music was born.
>> RELATED: Roy Sakuma’s annual ukulele festival marks his 52nd — and final — year
In 1997, the same year the company went online, Beloff documented the history of the instrument in The Ukulele: A Visual History. Beloff has also recorded, produced recordings and published songbooks by other artists and introduced the “fluke”, a ukulele-like instrument with a triangular body designed by his brother-in-law.
Beloff, 66, shares his experiences in a new book, UKEtopia!: Adventures in the Ukulele World, a fully illustrated history of the modern ukulele. He spoke about his experiences, the book and the upcoming 52nd Annual Ukulele Festival Hawaii in a recent interview. (Responses have been edited for length and clarity.)
For more information or to purchase the book, go to Fleamarketmusic.com.
Let’s start with your discovery of this Martin ukulele 30 years ago.
I fell madly in love with her overnight. I was curious about this instrument that had fallen out of favor (on the mainland) and eventually Liz (my wife) and I found this store in East LA which happened to have a bunch of books from the last days when the ukulele was popular . So I play through some of these old songbooks and I’m just blown away by how pretty it sounds. I had no idea that a simple four-stringed instrument could express such beautiful music, and I find it unfortunate that this instrument wasn’t more well known and appreciated. From there one thing leads to another.
How did you meet Roy Sakuma?
Roy ran the ukulele festival, his record label put out the (ukulele) music and on the radio Troy Fernandez (of the Ka’au Crater Boys) became known as a virtuoso and the kids started saying, ‘Wow, that’s cool .” Roy heard we were doing something and invited me to come to the festival. I will never forget performing in front of a huge audience.
Who is one of the most memorable people you’ve met through the ukulele?
George Harrison spent an afternoon with us playing ukuleles and singing Beatles songs leading up to a book called Jumpin’ Jim’s 60s Uke-in, which was to be pretty much the first songbook to have Beatles songs arranged for ukulele. We asked him, “Would you mind writing why you like the ukulele?” and he sat down and wrote the most adorable, cute paragraph about how everyone who loves a ukulele is cracker. Below he painted small pictures.
Is there a project you worked on that you particularly remember?
Eddie Vedder’s ukulele album “Ukulele Songs”. Eddie found a ukulele at a pawn shop and taught himself how to play it. He found an old song book of ours and that helped him figure out chords and learn some songs and then he started writing his own. When he decided to make his own album, which eventually became Ukulele Songs, he decided that the perfect accompaniment to the album would be a songbook, structured like our songbooks, with all the songs (of the album), with all the chords and all. Of course I said yes. Sometimes I had some trouble deciphering some of his unusual altered chords and I had to email him, “What are you doing right here in this song?” He would film himself, I think on a GoPro video, eh he plays the chords, and that’s how I would find out. The book sold out—the entire 5,000-print run—before it was even available. Working with Eddie was a wonderful experience.
Where does the new book fit you?
The pandemic blew us away like everyone else but I had this fun project to work on while we were in lockdown. Looking back over the entire 30 years it has been a wonderful, glorious adventure.
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Reach John Berger at jberger@staradvertiser.com.