Last night at the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz meeting I was talking to another bari-uke player named John. He had a blond Pono long scale baritone ukulele. John told me that he has been playing since 1949 and that he had the same teacher as Bill Tapia. I am going to have to find out more about John and his bari playing.
He also asked me if I had ever heard of Benny Chong because Benny played a re-entrant DGBE bari. Below is the first video I found of Benny and his skills are quite spectacular. I hadn't ever imagined of many of these chord shapes and hand positions. Now sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between a tenor and the bari but according to various sources he does play a baritone. His playing is s beautiful that it must be posted.
And then there were more. He's an amazing player and hard to stop watching. Here's a ukulele jazz site with some more historical info on Benny, link. Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 (photos) There's also a short interview article on Live Ukulele about him and the tuning that he uses.
Brilliance: Benny Chong & Byron Yasui duet.
Thanks, Jeff. I heard the name Benny Chong mentioned by an employee at a store in Waikiki. I had no idea how phenomenal Mr. Chong is. He says that he uses inversions to help him arrange his songs, which is what I'm getting from Glen and Roy Sakuma, but his use of the retrant tuning causes him to use alterations to these inversions. His single note scale runs, arpeggios, and magic with the melody make him the Charlie Parker of Uke. Benny says that practice for him is arranging and playing songs he likes. I will definitely get his cd and seek him out. Thanks again. K.J.
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