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home | buy ukulelia stuff | gary | email gary | suggestions | email craig | rss feed Tuesday, December 26, 2006Uncle Jack and the Bird of Paradise Could it be that "the worst song ever written" sparked America's first love affair with Hawaiian music?Here is a little historical rambling that I've been meaning to post since September that was sparked by a chat over a latte with Peter Alau. Peter had recently inherited an 'ukulele, a family heirloom with a mysterious past. The uke was found stashed away behind the fireplace at a recently-deceased relative's house in Hawaii. According to the Alau ohana lore, the family skeleton closet contains one uncle Jack Alau, who is remembered as a musician, composer, and heavy drinker. Uncle Jack was apparently a One-Hit-Wonder back in the day, but ended up a black sheep that no polite Alau talks story about. Jack Alau is notoriously remembered for composing the music for what Rick Reublin at Parlor Songs called "one of the worst songs ever written," One-Two-Three-Four. Rather bizarrely, One-Two-Three-Four is about as un-Hawaiian a song as you can imagine. Herewith, the lyrics, written by one S. Kalama: Down by the stream where I first met RebeccaAnd it really gets no better from there. If your morbid curiosity gets the better of you, here's the tune. (Okay, that was a bit disingenuous on my part. If you want to hear it played a la mode, here's a period cylinder recording from 1917.) Anyway, Peter wondered if the uke he inherited might have been the instrument used by Uncle Jack to compose One-Two-Three-Four. So I decided to do some sleuthing. I turned up nothing conclusive about the uke, nor any pertinent biographical info about Jack Alau. But my research did lead me to some rather unexpected insights about the original spread of the popularity of Hawaiiana--and Hawaiian music in particular--in the early 20th century. First off, while One-Two-Three-Four was originally penned in 1906, it didn't become a wildfire hit (and apparently it was!) until it was featured in a now all-but-forgotten stage play, entitled, The Bird of Paradise. Christopher B. Balme wrote an extensive piece about The Bird, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in the origins of Hawaiiana in popular culture. In "Selling the Bird: Richard Walton Tully’s The Bird of Paradise and the Dynamics of Theatrical Commodification," Blame notes that The Bird: “had considerable impact on US culture in the first half of the twentieth century…  While The Bird was a drama rather than a musical, per se,"Included in the production was purportedly authentic Hawaiian popular and traditional music. “Authentic” meant that the musicians had been imported from Hawaii. Although Laurette Taylor and other New York actresses rendered the hula, real Hawaiians provided the music… As only Hawaiians could at this time play in the style, Tully imported a Hawaiian band known as the Hawaiian Quintette, which included the famous steel guitarist Walter Kolomoku. Their performance led them to become so successful in their own right that they recorded the play’s incidental music for the Victor phonograph company, a recording that sold well into the 1920s."  Here's a couple Victor recordings of the Hawaiian Quintette, courtesy of John King: Kaua i ka huahuai (aka Hawaiian War Chant)(And a link to the explanatory page on John's site.) Naturally (or should I say "unnaturally"?), one of the pieces of "Hawaiian" music featured in the production was Uncle Jack's ditty. Being written in English (and phonetic German and Chinese), it caught on like wildfire, and was included in just about every Ukulele method book until Jim Beloff rescued us all with the advent of the Jumpin' Jim anthologies. Irving Berlin, himself responsible for many early riffs off of themes popularized by The Bird, also included One-Two-Three-Four in his 1917 show, Stop! Look! Listen!, which also included Henry Kailimai's On the Beach at Waikiki. As for Uncle Jack Alau? Well, he's still a mystery. Although if Ailau is an alternate spelling of his name, he might have also composed Wailana Waltz, more popularly known as Drowsy Waters. posted by Gary at 9:40 AM permalink 6 comments :: click here to comment! 6 Comments:This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
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By Very interesting post, Gary, and excellent research. Thanks for sharing.
By Thanks much for this Gary. I'll keep researching on my end.
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