WHEN SHE WAS in middle school, Samantha Goldblatt taught herself to play the ukulele by going online.
The first song she learned — “Creep” by Radiohead — was an unconventional choice of song, but the instrument turned out to be perfect for the singer.
“It’s kind of ironic,” she said. “I ended up moving to Hawaii.”
A senior at Port Townsend High School, Samantha teaches the introductory class at Ukuleles Unite, a monthly gathering where people of all ages learn to play all kinds of music on the four-string guitar.
The strum-alongs have proved so popular, organizers are adding another event to the calendar: Ukulele Open Mic at The Upstage.
“It’s kind of like happy hour with ukuleles,” Bruce Cowan said.
Cowan is a school music teacher and one of the founders of UU, which has, according to its newsletter, been “Promoting Esprit d’Ukulele in Port Townsend and East Jefferson County since October.”
Share the spirit
The group will share that spirit at The Upstage restaurant the first Tuesday of the month, which will resemble the song circle at the monthly gatherings:
People get up and perform a song or lead a song, with everybody singing and strumming along.
“We don’t know how it’s going to go,” Cowan said. “We’re going to make it up as we go along.”
The ukulele, which is experiencing a resurgence in popularity, is the ultimate singalong instrument: easy to learn, easy to play, easy to carry.
And it’s not just suited to Hawaiian tunes or camp songs, as Saturday’s song circle showed.
After an hour of small-group lessons, one beginning group, led by Vi Raddatz Strobridge, launched into a spirited version of “Hey, Good Looking.”
Another group of beginners, led by Cowan, sang Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart.”
The intermediate class, taught by Libby Palmer and Dixie Llewellin, played “Columbus Stockade Blues.”
Then the advanced players — George Yount, Mike Bare, Walter Vaux and Dick Hinshaw — took the floor and played “Home on the Range” with Yount, also a UU founder, on harmonica.
A subset of the Sweet Ukeladies, including Germaine Arthur, the third UU founder, performed “Red Sails in the Sunset,” then led “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” the chord changes indicated by the players, sitting behind music stands with diagrams of chords on signs.
Yount, who is a folk dance caller, also played a lively jig and taught everyone how to play it, stepping forward, backward or sideways to indicate chord changes.
Another polished player, Mike Bare of Sequim, led the Jim Croce hit from the ’70s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” a surprisingly fun song to play in a group.
Bare started playing only three years ago, he said, after his son got a new ukulele and gave his dad his old one.
Bare found the ukulele group at the Port Angels Senior Center, where he learned to play, and now coordinates the weekly meetings Wednesdays at 12:30 p.m. in the lounge.
His son upgraded him from the hand-me-down uke to a fluke, a brand of ukulele that has a triangular shape and a body of expanded plastic, which gives it a good, loud sound, Bare said.
A core group from the senior center performed at the Juan de Fuca Festival and Joyce Daze.
It also leads singalongs once a month at retirement homes.
“We play a variety of songs — some Hawaiian, some oldies,” Bare said. “Next month being February, we are getting some love songs together.”
The novice group at Saturday’s UU gathering played “My Darling Clementine” during the song circle despite starting from scratch an hour and a half before.
Samantha first showed the students how to tune their uke, then how to strum it.
She teaches the preferred strumming technique in Hawaii, using the fingers, not the thumb, in a cascading motion down the strings. The thumb of the other hand is pressed into service, countering the pressure of the fingers playing chords, which creates a clearer sound, she said.
After mastering three chords — F, C and C7 — the new players learned two songs.
From young to older
Students ranged from 10-year-old Lizzie Gainer of Chimacum, who brought a ukulele her aunt gave her after a trip to Hawaii, to Lee Erickson, who bought a travel model to play music with her grandchildren.
It was Lee’s grandmother, Ruth, who lived in Mount Vernon, who inspired her.
Lee remembers Ruth playing “Little Grass Shack” and other tunes.
“She was either playing the bongos, the organ or the ukulele,” Erickson said.
“She did instill that musicality. I thought it would be fun to pick it up, but I never did.”
She’s the Nana now, Lee said, so this Christmas, she and granddaughter Saphira, who is 3, learned a few simple holiday songs on the ukulele and performed them at a family concert.
Saphira was able to hold her little fingers on the chords for “Jingle Bells” and “Silent Night,” Lee said, and was “all over it.”
“She’s bringing her ukulele up when she’s coming to visit in March,” Lee said.
Lee and about a dozen other novices were in the introductory class, including Dennis Lenton, who said he came because he found a ukulele in a closet.
Karen Erickson said she got her ukulele out of the closet, where it had stayed after her husband gave it to her as a Christmas present a year ago.
A member of the Daughters of Norway, Karen said learning a new language — she’s taking Norwegian — and playing a musical instrument are two of the best ways to keep the mind active.
“And it’s easy to take with you,” she said of the ukulele.
Portability is a big plus. Ukuleles Unite held its first flash mob Dec. 9, gathering at Haller Fountain and walking to the Undertown Coffee Shop, where they played “You are My Sunshine.”
Some of the strummers continued to the Better Living coffee shop, where they played “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” then up to St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church, where they entertained people for a good long while and taught each other some deeper mysteries of the instrument, according to the write-up in the newsletter.
Dick Hinshaw, one of the advanced players, said he likes to play old-time swing on the uke.
Like Samantha, he lived several years in Hawaii, where he learned to make ukuleles from local craftspeople.
But he has been playing off and on since he was 18 years old, Hinshaw said, and his cousin ordered a baritone ukulele from Sears and Roebuck.
Hinshaw, who lived in Edmonds, got his own uke after he went to Alaska to work as a cook’s helper in a fish and wildlife camp.
Banjo-playing cook
“The cook was a banjo player,” Hinshaw said. “I ordered a ukulele from Sears and Roebuck, took out the little book it came with and started playing chords I knew.”
The cook played polkas and schottishches, Hinshaw recalled.
He moved back to Seattle, where he lived for several years on a houseboat on Lake Union, and switched to the guitar in the ’70s.
He also bought a five-string banjo and a mandolin.
“I played them all,” he said, “and in the end, I got rid of them all and went back to the ukulele.”
It was long breaks in playing music that made him return to the ukulele, Hinshaw said, because it is easier than a guitar to pick up if you haven’t played in a long time.
That’s because the ukulele has nylon strings, not metal ones that require calluses to build up before you can play comfortably.
On some of the less expensive models, the strings are basically fishing line, Samantha told her class, which ties in with the ukulele’s affinity with Hawaii.
According to www.ukulelehunt.com, four-stringed guitars were first made in Honolulu in the 1880s by Portuguese woodworkers who had emigrated from Madeira.
When she was a sophomore in high school, Samantha moved with her family to Maui, where she played in bands around Lahaina, taught ukulele lessons and sold ukuleles to tourists.
In Hawaii, children learn to play the ukulele in fourth- and fifth-grade music class, she said.
She learned on a concert ukulele and now plays a tenor uke, the third of four sizes.
Student model
“I still have my tiny student model,” she said.
The next Ukuleles Unite meeting is Saturday, Feb. 18, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church, 1120 Walker St., Port Townsend.
Lessons are free, and loaner ukuleles are available without charge and can be taken home between lessons.
Students can pay $2 if they want to keep the day’s lesson sheets.
A jar is put out for donations to cover the hall rental and coffee.
On Tuesday, Feb. 7, ukulele players will converge on The Upstage at 5:30 p.m. and play until 8 p.m.
To get on the Ukuleles Unite mailing list, phone Yount at 360-385-0456.
Hinshaw makes ukuleles under the label Koa Ukuleles. He also gives ukulele lessons.
For more information, phone 360-379-0320 or email hinshawrm@msn.com.
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Jennifer Jackson writes about Port Townsend and Jefferson County every Wednesday. To contact her with items for this column, phone 360-379-5688 or email jjackson@olypen.com.
