senior lifestyles
Unusual musical instrument makes sweet music for Hilton Head man
By Tim A. Rutherford
For Coastal Senior
Tim A. Rutherford photo
Pop Spencer plays one of his ukelin-related instruments in his Hilton Head Island home.
Hilton Head Island
Pop Spencer could be a one-man band.
With a piano teacher for a mother, oom-pahing his way through high school on the sousaphone and plucking a guitar most of his life, Spencer has developed quite an ear and natural musical ability.
He could be a one-man band. But instead he chooses to fine-tune his skills playing a uniquely American instrument - the ukelin.
Some 30 years ago, before Spencer relocated from the painfully cold New York winters to the more temperate climate of South Carolina, it was a co-worker who introduced Spencer to the ukelin.
The odd, table-top instrument is both strummed like a guitar or autoharp and bowed like a violin.
"I liked it, liked the sound of it," Spencer said, sitting among his collection of 17 ukelins and related instruments. "I saw one listed on a estate auction banner and went to the sale.
"Well, I had groceries on the table and the bills paid, so I figured I had $10 to play with. The other guy bidding dropped out at $9 - so I got it for $10."
That was the beginning. Since then, Spencer, 73, has added to his collection, picking up ukelins at auctions, flea markets and antique shops. Some folks even give Spencer the instruments - just to get them out of their closets.
The instrument is hardly rare. At any given time there are a handful for sale on auction website Ebay. Thousands were made and often peddled door-to-door or sold in what would today be called multi-level marketing schemes. It was, according to Bob's Ukelin Home (www.geocities.com/~ukelin/), the ethics of some of those sales people that ultimately caused the demise of the ukelin.
What is a ukelin - or any one of the other dozen instruments that perform the same but go by a different name?
According to a website created by the Smithsonian Institution, the "ukelin is one of the more common trade names of a type of stringed musical instruments marketed from the early 1920s until about 1965.
"Ukelins combine two sets of strings, one group of 16 strings tuned to the scale of C (from middle C on a piano to the C two octaves above) plus four groups of four strings, each group tuned to a chord. The instrument is meant to be placed on a table with the larger end toward the performer, and while the right hand plays the melody on the treble strings with a violin bow, accompanying chords are played on the bass strings with the left hand using either the fingers or a pick. Each string and chord group is numbered, and sheet music is provided in a special numerical system intended to simplify playing for persons unable to read standard musical notation.
"Ukelins were sold by the Phonoharp Company of East Boston, Mass., and its subsidiaries, which apparently included the Bosstone Company. A patent for this instrument (Patent #1,579,780) was filed Dec. 3, 1923, and awarded April 6, 1926, to Paul F. Richter, who assigned it to the Phonoharp Company. In 1926, the Phonoharp Company merged with Oscar Schmidt International Inc., of New Jersey, and ukelins were then sold by them and their subsidiaries, which included the International Music Corporation and the Manufacturers' Advertising Company of Newark, N.J. Similar instruments were sold by the Marxochime Colony, New Troy, Mich., under the names Pianoette, Pianolin, Sol-o-lin and Violin Uke. Other names sometimes encountered include Banjolin and Hawaiian Art Violin.
"Ukelin-type instruments were usually sold by door-to-door commission salesmen, often on a time-payment plan, and were intended for home music-making by persons without a formal musical education."
But if you think that's all there is to know about the ukelin, you'd be wrong.
The Smithsonian offers an instructional booklet and other websites, like Bob's Ukelin Home, are excellent sources of history, music and lessons.
In fact, Spencer has produced his own instructional video that he sells on Ebay and by mail. In it, Spencer demonstrates how to string and tune the instrument and, as he says, "shows you how not to play it."
Spencer sells himself short though. On his favorite ukelin he lays down a pleasing version of "Red River Valley," strumming deliberately with his left hand and skillfully snaking the bow up and down the strings on the right hand side of the instrument.
Spencer isn't stuck in the past though. He also owns an Omnichord, an all-electronic, modernized Autoharp that requires no tuning and comes with built-in rhythm tracks. And he is a one-man band sometimes, playing "Your Cheatin' Heart" on the 12-string guitar while tapping out notes on an electronic keyboard - using a pencil rubber-banded to the guitar's head.
Still, the ukelin is in his heart, despite ukelin players being few and far between.
"I was on WSAV playing the ukelin some 20 years ago," Spencer recalls, "And a guy called me who lived in Garden City. We met at the Sears parking lot in Savannah and played our ukelins on the hood of the car."
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