99 Fun Facts About The Ukulele

Which four notes are the most common ukulele tuning?

GCEA, with a twist: the G is pitched above the C next to it, so all four strings sit within one octave. That 're-entrant' tuning gives the uke its tight, bright chords.

The immigrants who built the first ukuleles reached Hawaii in 1879 under contract to work in which industry?

Sugar. The three future instrument makers were signed on as plantation hands, and only set up as guitar makers in Honolulu once their contracts had run out.

Which ukulele size is normally tuned DGBE, like the top four strings of a guitar?

Baritone. The deepest of the four standard sizes dates only from the 1940s, and because its strings match a guitar's, guitarists can strum it with the chord shapes they already know.

Which ukulele size came first and is still sometimes just called the 'standard'?

Soprano. Makers later stretched it into the larger, louder concert size, and the bigger tenor soon followed.

What does the word ukulele roughly translate to in Hawaiian?

Jumping flea, from the Hawaiian words for flea and for leap: perhaps a picture of the player's fingers darting over the strings, though a legend at the royal court tells it differently.

Which band put a ukulele at the centre of its 2009 hit 'Hey, Soul Sister'?

Train. Singer Pat Monahan thought the song fell flat on guitar until a co-writer picked up a ukulele; 'it made my words dance', he said, and the band's guitarist had to learn the instrument.

The ukulele descends from small guitars brought to Hawaii by immigrants from where?

Portugal. The little four-string guitars its emigrants played in the streets of Honolulu caught on at the royal court, and within a few years Hawaiians had made the instrument their own.

Which small four-string guitar, also called a braguinha, is the ukulele's closest ancestor?

Machete. By 1885 two newcomers to Honolulu were advertising home-made machetes in a local newspaper, and within a few years Hawaiians had their own name for the instrument.

What trade had Nunes, Espírito Santo and Dias learned at home before they built the first ukuleles?

Cabinet makers. Building instruments was an old sideline of the trade in Europe, and once free of their first jobs in Hawaii all three set up as guitar makers in Honolulu.

The three men credited with building the first ukuleles sailed to Hawaii in 1879 from which Atlantic islands?

Madeira. They landed in Honolulu from the ship Ravenscrag in August 1879, and within two weeks a local paper reported the newcomers 'delighting the people with nightly street concerts'.

Which Hawaiian king, the 'Merrie Monarch', is remembered as the ukulele's royal champion?

Kalākaua was reviving hula in the face of missionary disapproval, and he is said to have made the newly arrived little guitar part of it, playing it himself and featuring it at court.

Which Hawaiian wood is traditionally preferred for ukuleles?

Koa grows nowhere but Hawaii, where it was already the wood of outrigger canoes; by 1898 one of the first makers was advertising instruments 'made of Hawaiian wood'.

Which company invented the oval-bodied 'pineapple' ukulele?

Kamaka. Samuel Kamaka built the oval body in the 1920s; friends are said to have joked that it looked like a pineapple, so an artist among them painted one on the front.

What were ukulele strings originally made of?

Catgut, which despite the name is cord made from the intestines of sheep and other livestock. Most ukulele strings today are nylon or fluorocarbon instead.

Which other instrument did Hawaiian musicians bring into American popular music alongside the ukulele?

The steel guitar, laid flat and played with a sliding bar. Hawaiian troupes took it through mainland vaudeville and world's fairs with the ukulele, and it later became a fixture of country music.

George Formby's trademark instrument crossed the ukulele with which other instrument?

Banjo. Formby was struggling on the music-hall stage until he worked a ukulele into his act, and the banjo-bodied kind became his trademark through his films of the 1930s and 1940s.

Which Pacific island's ukulele is carved from a single block of wood and strung with fishing line?

Tahiti. Its ukulele has no hollow sound box, only an opening at the back, and players strum its eight fishing-line strings much faster than a Hawaiian uke for a higher, thinner sound.

The 1915 world's fair credited with setting off America's ukulele craze was held in which city?

San Francisco. Crowds at the Hawaiian Pavilion sent Tin Pan Alley rushing to write Hawaiian-themed songs, though the ukulele was already selling well on the West Coast before the fair opened.

The ukulele became an icon of which era, when sheet music began printing its chords?

The Jazz Age. A crooner with a ukulele is the stock picture of those years, and arranger May Singhi Breen persuaded publishers to print uke chords on almost every popular song sheet.

Cliff 'Ukulele Ike' Edwards made some of the earliest recordings of which vocal style in 1922?

Scat singing. Edwards called his version 'eefin', a wordless solo that sounded like a kazoo; other singers copied it, and four years later Louis Armstrong made the style famous.

Cliff 'Ukulele Ike' Edwards later became famous as the voice of which Disney character?

Jiminy Cricket. Edwards, a household name in 1920s vaudeville as Ukulele Ike, sang 'When You Wish Upon a Star' for the 1940 film Pinocchio, and it won the Oscar for best song.

After World War II Mario Maccaferri sold millions of cheap ukuleles made of which material?

Plastic. When a television star plugged Maccaferri's moulded Islander on air, its sales exploded, and wooden ukuleles started selling faster too.

Which 1950s TV host set off a ukulele boom by strumming one on his shows?

Arthur Godfrey was famous for plugging only products he used himself, so when he played and endorsed ukuleles on his CBS shows they sold in the millions.

Marilyn Monroe played a ukulele in which 1959 film?

Some Like It Hot. Monroe plays the singer and ukulele player of an all-girl band, which two musicians on the run from gangsters join disguised as women.

Tiny Tim's 1968 ukulele hit was a cover of which song?

Tiptoe Through the Tulips was a 1929 song made popular by crooning guitarist Nick Lucas. Tiny Tim's quavering falsetto turned it into a novelty hit all over again almost forty years later.

Tiny Tim reached a national audience in 1968 when he pulled his ukulele from a shopping bag on which TV comedy show?

Laugh-In. He sang 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket' in his falsetto on the show's first regular broadcast, became a frequent guest, and was back beside John Wayne for its hundredth episode.

On which television programme did Tiny Tim marry 'Miss Vicki' in December 1969?

The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson's programme staged the ceremony on air, NBC put the audience at more than 30 million, and the tape is one of the few from those years that was kept.

By 1946 George Formby had strummed his ukulele for an estimated three million members of which audience?

Servicemen and women. Formby spent the war touring with the forces' entertainment service, ENSA, and was awarded the OBE for it.

Which Beatle, a Formby fan, gave ukuleles to friends and taught Tom Petty to play?

George Harrison turned up at Tom Petty's house, taught him the chords and, on leaving, opened a car trunk full of ukuleles and left four more, 'because everyone doesn't carry one around'.

Teacher J. Chalmers Doane made the ukulele a classroom instrument across which country from the 1960s?

Canada. As music supervisor for the schools of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Doane handed out inexpensive ukuleles to teach children to read music, and at its peak about 50,000 people were learning his way.

Which 12-year-old won America's Got Talent in 2016 with a ukulele?

Grace VanderWaal. She bought her ukulele with her eleventh-birthday money, taught herself to play from YouTube videos, and won the show the following year performing her own songs.

In 2009 the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain filled the Royal Albert Hall as part of which annual event?

The BBC Proms. The eight players put Wagner, Beethoven and the Sex Pistols on one bill, and at least a thousand people in the audience strummed along to the Ode to Joy on ukuleles of their own.

Hawaiian singer IZ's famous medley combines 'Over the Rainbow' with which song?

What a Wonderful World. IZ taped the medley as a demo in 1988, and it sat unreleased for five years until the engineer played it to the producer of his next album.

How was IZ's 'Over the Rainbow' medley recorded in 1988?

In one take at 3 a.m. Engineer Milan Bertosa was closing up when IZ phoned and was told he had fifteen minutes to get there; he arrived, sat on a steel chair found by security, and sang it once.

IZ's best-known track reworks a song first sung by which star in 1939?

Judy Garland, in The Wizard of Oz. The studio nearly cut the ballad for slowing the film down; half a century later IZ remade it with one voice and a ukulele.

Which 1993 IZ album became Hawaii's first certified platinum record?

Facing Future became the first Hawaiian album to sell a million copies, almost entirely on the strength of one track that was added in the last days of recording.

Which rare honour did the state of Hawaii give IZ after his death in 1997?

Lying in state at the Capitol. Days later his ashes were carried out to sea on a traditional voyaging canoe while thousands watched from the shore and drivers across the islands sounded their horns.

IZ co-founded his first band, the Makaha Sons of Niʻihau, as a teenager with which relative?

His older brother, Henry, known as Skippy. The group spent the 1970s reviving traditional Hawaiian melodies at a time when tourist hula tunes filled the islands' stages.

IZ became a hero at home partly for championing which cause in his songs?

Hawaiian sovereignty. Beneath the gentle voice, many of his lyrics argued outright for the islands' independence, and that made him a cultural hero as much as his hits did.

Jake Shimabukuro's viral YouTube video was a cover of which Beatles song?

While My Guitar Gently Weeps. The clip had been filmed for a New York television show; someone uploaded it in 2006 without telling him, and it became one of YouTube's first viral hits.

Jake Shimabukuro accompanied which Honolulu-born star when she sang for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Performance?

Bette Midler. The two opened her set with the Beatles' 'In My Life', her voice against his ukulele, and afterwards both were presented to the Queen.

What is the title of the 2012 documentary about Jake Shimabukuro?

Life on Four Strings. Tadashi Nakamura's hour-long film traces how a boy raised by a single mother in Hawaii became an international star, and it won audience awards at two film festivals.

Which pop star, a ukulele player since the age of six, has had a signature Fender ukulele since 2020?

Billie Eilish. She wrote her first song on a ukulele as a child, years before her debut single made her famous, and Fender now sells a model that carries her name.

Which song did 'Ukulele Ike' Cliff Edwards introduce on screen in The Hollywood Revue of 1929?

Singin' in the Rain. Ukulele Ike's version was a hit 23 years before the song gave its name to the Gene Kelly musical.

Which Andean relative of the ukulele was traditionally made from an armadillo shell?

Charango. The rounded back was traditionally the dried shell of an armadillo, though most modern instruments are carved from wood instead.

Which billionaire investor took up the ukulele in 1949 to impress a girl and went on playing it at shareholder meetings?

Warren Buffett. The girl already had a boyfriend who played, so Buffett bought a ukulele to compete; he lost the girl and kept the instrument for the next seventy years.

Since the 2000s, the ukulele has challenged which traditional first instrument in school music lessons?

The recorder. Teachers like the ukulele because children can sing while they strum, a handful of chords comes quickly and a whole class can play together.

Which famous American guitar maker threw itself into ukuleles in the 1920s craze?

Martin. Its ukuleles sold so well that they are said to have carried the firm through the lean guitar years of the 1920s and 1930s.

Which member of Queen wrote, sang and played the ukulele on 'Good Company', from A Night at the Opera?

Brian May. The song came to him 'while I was plunking away at the ukulele', and he then imitated a whole Dixieland band on his electric guitar to go with it.

Which guitar hero began on a one-string ukulele found while clearing garbage with his father?

Jimi Hendrix was allowed to keep it by the homeowner, and he taught himself single notes by ear, following along to Elvis Presley records.

Which astronaut was photographed strumming a ukulele in quarantine after returning from the Moon in 1969?

Neil Armstrong strummed inside the sealed Mobile Quarantine Facility while his Apollo 11 crewmates looked out of the window at the crowd welcoming them home to Houston.

Tiny Tim's 'Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight' plays in which cartoon's 1999 debut episode?

SpongeBob SquarePants uses the song in its first episode, Help Wanted, though Tiny Tim died as the script was being written and never knew it had been chosen.

In which Pixar short are the two lovers named Uku and Lele, spelling out 'ukulele' between them?

Lava has no dialogue beyond its song, which director James Ford Murphy wrote himself after falling for Hawaii on his honeymoon 25 years earlier.

Which singer-songwriter, also a painter, settled for a ukulele as a girl because her mother disapproved of guitars?

Joni Mitchell's mother linked the guitar with hillbilly country music, so the ukulele came first and the instrument she really wanted had to wait.

Bernadette Peters sings 'Tonight You Belong to Me' to a ukulele and cornet in which 1979 Carl Reiner comedy?

The Jerk hired session ace Lyle Ritz to play the part off-screen, and the film's lead actor mimed the strumming on camera.

Paul McCartney opened which Beatles love song alone on a ukulele at a 2002 Royal Albert Hall tribute concert?

Something began with McCartney alone on the little instrument before Eric Clapton and a full band swept in, an arrangement he went on using in his own shows.

Which grunge frontman's 2011 solo album Ukulele Songs mixes originals and covers played on the instrument?

Eddie Vedder had first put the instrument on a Pearl Jam record with the short song Soon Forget, written during a spell of writer's block when he had banned himself from playing guitar.

Singer Tyler Joseph plays ukulele on 'House of Gold', a single from the album Vessel by which Ohio duo?

Twenty One Pilots first gave the song away free in their email newsletter, then re-recorded it for Vessel, their major-label debut.

Amanda Palmer's 2010 EP covers the 'popular hits' of which English rock band on her 'magical ukulele'?

Radiohead's Idioteque, in Palmer's ukulele version, became NPR's Song of the Day, and Paste named another of her covers among the best of the year.

Which Australian singer-songwriter found the bridge and chorus of his hit 'Riptide' while playing a ukulele?

Vance Joy had shelved the opening lines in 2008; four years later the ukulele tune arrived after a trip to the shops, and the words then came easily.

Which member of The Who sings 'Blue, Red and Grey' backed only by his own ukulele and a few horns?

Pete Townshend thought the song too slight to release, and it reached The Who by Numbers only because producer Glyn Johns insisted on it.

In which bittersweet romantic drama does Ryan Gosling play a ukulele while Michelle Williams tap-dances?

Blue Valentine used the tender scene in its trailer, which makes the couple's later bitterness towards each other all the harder to watch.

Tom Hanks performs 'The Cowboy Song' on a ukulele in which comedy written and directed by John Patrick Shanley?

Joe Versus the Volcano's writer-director composed the tune himself, along with a second song that recurs as a theme all the way through the film.

A 1915 ukulele craze set off a fad for Hawaiian-themed songs among the writers of which New York district?

Tin Pan Alley, the cluster of song publishers on West 28th Street, turned to island novelty numbers once crowds had flocked to hear a Hawaiian quartet at the world's fair.

Mario Maccaferri, maker of millions of cheap ukuleles, earlier designed the guitar favoured by which Belgian-born star?

Django Reinhardt made the Selmer guitar's cutting tone famous; its designer later moved into moulded goods, from clothes pegs to his Islander ukulele.

Before finding fame with his ukulele, British comedian George Formby spent his boyhood working in which sport?

Horse racing took Formby out of school at seven to be a stable boy, and he rode as a jockey until 1921 without ever winning a race.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performs its deadpan rock and pop covers wearing what?

Formal evening dress, with the men in black tie behind music stands, lets the group send up a prim classical orchestra while playing tunes nobody expects.

The timple, a small five-string cousin of the ukulele, is the traditional instrument of which Atlantic archipelago?

Canary Islands players on La Palma and in northern Tenerife often leave off one string, so that the timple can be played just like a ukulele.

The cuatro, a four-string folk guitar often called the Caribbean's ukulele, anchors the joropo music of which country?

Venezuela's cuatro descends from the Spanish Renaissance guitar, which makes it about three centuries older than the Hawaiian instrument it resembles.

Which New Jersey-born crooner was given a ukulele by his uncle for his 15th birthday and played it at family gatherings?

Frank Sinatra got the gift from his uncle Domenico in Hoboken, and those living-room performances came years before he sang with a big band.

Which Brixton-born future glam star took up the ukulele and tea-chest bass for skiffle sessions as a boy?

David Bowie started the piano at about the same time, and his Chuck Berry routines for the local Wolf Cubs were remembered as mesmerizing.

A ukulele was smuggled inside a stack of furs aboard which explorer's 1926 flight towards the North Pole?

Richard E. Byrd's crewman Richard Konter hid it with the help of aviator Floyd Bennett, tying a harmonica to its neck, and the instrument was later signed.

Kroncong music, driven by a pair of small ukuleles nicknamed cak and cuk, developed in the port cities of which country?

Indonesia's kroncong grew up on Java, where the two little instruments interlock in the same way as the parts of a gamelan orchestra.

Which small four-string cousin of the ukulele is a mainstay of Brazilian samba and choro music?

Cavaquinho players in Brazil use a model slightly larger than the European original, built to look like a tiny classical guitar.

The ukelin, once sold door to door across rural America, took its name from the ukulele and which other instrument?

Violin gave the ukelin its bow and half its name; travelling salesmen sold the awkward hybrid to rural families on payment plans, and many were sent back before they were paid off.

Ukulele players who use a pick rather than their fingers commonly choose one made of which soft material?

Felt suits the ukulele's gentle voice, whereas pickers of other instruments long prized hard tortoiseshell, taken from the hawksbill sea turtle.

The ukulele, like the guitar, belongs to which broad family of necked string instruments?

Lute, to instrument classifiers, means any necked instrument whose strings run parallel to its sound table, not just the round-backed Renaissance favourite.

Most modern ukulele strings are made of which synthetic material, first tried on guitars in the 1940s?

Nylon became a string material when New York maker Albert Augustine, short of supplies in wartime, tried army-surplus line; DuPont doubted players would accept it.

Which Hawaiian music star discovered ukulele virtuoso Taimane at 13, before she studied under Jake Shimabukuro?

Don Ho, the Waikiki showman behind Tiny Bubbles, spotted her as a young teenager, and she went on to play NPR's Tiny Desk series in 2020.

Which term describes a ukulele's standard tuning, where the fourth string is pitched higher than the third?

Re-entrant tuning puts a high G where a low one is expected, which packs the notes close together and makes the ukulele's tight chord harmonies possible.

A resonator ukulele gets its loud, metallic voice from a spun cone of which metal in place of a wooden top?

Aluminum cones came from John Dopyera's National company, which added ukuleles to its resonator guitars within a year of opening in 1927.

Which California ukulele brand launched the U-Bass in 2009, fitting thick rubber strings to a ukulele-sized body?

Kala, founded in Petaluma by Mike Upton, found that fat rubber strings gave a tiny body a huge low end, and well-known bassists soon endorsed it.

Which Japanese company launched the guitalele in 1997, giving a ukulele-sized body six single guitar strings?

Yamaha's GL-1 was the first commercially produced instrument of its kind, and rival firms now sell their own versions under a tangle of similar names.

Ukulele pioneer Lyle Ritz later played bass on countless hit records as part of which Los Angeles session collective?

The Wrecking Crew took him on after his two 1950s ukulele albums failed to pay the bills, even though they set off a wave of new players in Hawaii.

Jesse Kalima won a 1935 Honolulu amateur contest at 15 by playing which John Philip Sousa march on a ukulele?

Stars and Stripes Forever made the teenager a local sensation, and he went on to champion the larger tenor ukulele and to plug it into an amplifier.

Ukulele comedian George Formby plays a chimney sweep who enters which real motorcycle race in the 1935 film No Limit?

Isle of Man TT week in 1935 was the film's backdrop, shot on location, and a statue in Douglas shows Formby in riding leathers leaning on a lamp post.

One of the first printed uses of the word ukulele came in a 1907 instrument catalogue from which New York institution?

Metropolitan Museum of Art curators listed two Hawaiian ukuleles in the Crosby Brown Collection, one about the size of today's smallest standard model and one larger.

Which Hawaiian queen, herself a ukulele player, believed the instrument's name meant 'the gift that came here'?

Liliʻuokalani, the last Hawaiian queen and the writer of Aloha ʻOe, is also said to have played guitar, piano, organ and zither.

Which composer wrote 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', a showpiece for the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain?

Ennio Morricone's spaghetti-western theme survives the shrinking remarkably well: Classic FM called the group's version sprightly and delightfully delicate.

A taropatch ukulele, built for extra strumming volume, differs from an ordinary ukulele by having which feature?

Paired strings, six or eight in all, are tuned in four courses; the nickname was first given in Hawaii to a five-string forerunner brought by immigrants.

Roy Sakuma dreamed up Honolulu's annual Ukulele Festival in 1971 while doing which job at Kapiolani Park?

Groundskeeper Sakuma had studied with Ohta-san, and the summer festival he started grew into the largest of its kind anywhere, running for 52 years.

Fans founded the George Formby Society in 1961 at the Imperial Hotel in which English seaside resort?

Blackpool's Imperial Hotel is also where the society holds its conventions; the founders were fans who answered an advert in The Stage after the comedian died.

Roy Smeck's ukulele short His Pastimes premiered in 1926 on the bill with which John Barrymore feature film?

Don Juan was the first feature with a synchronized Vitaphone score, and the shorts before it let audiences hear Smeck, the Wizard of the Strings, as well as see him.

Which 'Original Ukulele Lady' fought to have the American musicians' union accept the ukulele as a real instrument?

May Singhi Breen was refused union membership in 1931 because officials would not call the ukulele an instrument; she also got its chords printed on sheet music.

Which British sailing ship landed the ukulele's first makers at Honolulu in August 1879 after four months at sea?

Ravenscrag rounded Cape Horn with 419 contract labourers aboard, and within two weeks a Honolulu newspaper was praising the newcomers' nightly street concerts.

George Formby's dazzling ukulele sound relied on which fast, syncopated right-hand strumming technique?

Split stroke strumming gave Formby a rhythm so intricate that one critic said nobody had ever reproduced his casual, devastating right hand.

Which five-string instrument, nicknamed the 'mother of the ukulele', reached Hawaii with immigrants in 1879?

Rajão players at home use it to accompany folk dances, and in Hawaii the newcomer picked up the nickname of the taro-patch fiddle.

Which 1912 American stage play is credited with fixing the image of Hawaii as a land of ukulele-playing island girls?

The Bird of Paradise put more-or-less authentic Hawaiian music and dancing on stage, alongside the grass huts that became an island cliché.

Which surf-guitar pioneer bought a ukulele for six dollars and played 'Tennessee Waltz' as his first song on it?

Dick Dale took up the ukulele after falling for Hank Williams, and an uncle who played the oud also shaped the sound he later brought to surf rock.