Posted on: Sunday, May 23, 2004

Riding a 'ukulele revival a lifetime later

By Steve Chawkins
Los Angeles Times

Bill Tapia is so intense about his gigs that he once played with a newly broken wrist. Over his manager's protests, he ripped off his cast, strode to the front of the hall, hunched over his 'ukulele and, in exquisite pain, made beautiful music.

But he was younger then, a mere 94.

Today, at 96, his 'ukulele passion is unabated. (His first compact disc, "Tropical Swing," on Moon Room Records, came out early this year, in a nostalgic CD praised as delightful and vibrant by The Advertiser's Wayne Harada. Another is due out soon.)

He still performs in music-store back rooms and Hawaiian-restaurant jam sessions, at 'ukulele conventions and in concert halls. Each week, he gives lessons to 20 or so students at his home in Westminster, Calif. And a documentary about this 'ukulele enthusiast, called "To You Sweetheart, Aloha," is in post-production by Walking Iris Films in California.

"He was one of the first to play jazz standards and improvise on the 'ukulele, and he was doing it when both jazz and the 'ukulele were new," said Byron Yasui, a jazz bassist and director of graduate studies in music at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. "Bill's a 'ukulele virtuoso."

A trim man with a white beard and a fondness for pinstripes, Tapia has been a musician all his life. As a kid in Honolulu, he entertained sailors riding out World War I at Pearl Harbor. During his long musical career on the Mainland, he sat in with the likes of Louis Armstrong and taught 'ukulele to such stars as Clark Gable and Jimmy Durante.

Now he's surfing a wave of interest in the 'ukulele as he resists an undertow of lingering sadness from the deaths, in the past few years, of his wife and daughter.

"Thank God I can still play," he said recently, sitting in the sunshine on the patio of the house he shares with a woman who assists him. "It helps me forget a little."

But he doesn't forget much.

As a kid, he strummed for tips on the streets of O'ahu, wowing the tourists by holding his 'ukulele behind his neck and offering up his fast-paced version of "Stars and Stripes Forever."

When he was 12, his mother reluctantly let him leave school to make money for the family on the Honolulu vaudeville circuit.

"I was hanging out with musicians twice my age and didn't need school," Tapia recalled. "I thought I was pretty hot stuff."

At 16, he was offered a job with a dance band on a steamship bound for California. His family threatened him with reform school if he accepted, but he did.

"In the middle of the ocean, I sent my mother a telegram," he said. " 'Don't worry,' I told her. 'I'll be OK.' "

That trip was just his first. Over the next couple of decades, he hopped between the islands and the Mainland, falling ever more in love with jazz. His popularity rose.

Tapia played 'ukulele and guitar with bands and had his own group, Tappy's Island Swingers. During World War II, he led a 14-piece band in a "blackout ballroom," where couples danced in the dark as a precaution against enemy bombing raids.

For all that, Hawai'i was no place for an ambitious jazzman. When the war ended, Tapia settled on the Mainland for good. But big bands didn't want 'ukuleles, so he played the guitar, working for such swing luminaries as Charlie Barnet. Eventually settling near San Francisco, he carved out a niche teaching, doing studio sessions, playing in TV orchestras and working as a sideman in band after band.

For more than 50 years, he barely touched an 'ukulele on the job. At home, he broke it out from time to time. Even now, he mists up a little at the memory of playing the sweet, simple "To You Sweetheart, Aloha" for his wife and daughter.

"My daughter danced her first hula to it," he said. "They treasured that song."

In the world of bands and bookings, though, the 'ukulele was seen as a novelty, and Tapia had become known mostly as a guitarist.

A few years ago, Tapia and his wife, Barbie, moved to Orange County, Calif. They wanted to be near their daughter, Cleo, a legal secretary who, Tapia said, "sang like Billie Holiday."

Then Cleo died of cancer at 60. Soon she was followed by Barbie, Tapia's wife of 64 years.

"I lost everybody I loved," he said. "I still cry almost every day."

Depressed, he wandered into a music store one day in 2001. He figured he'd get his old guitar fixed and maybe teach his great-grandchildren a few chords. But he started fooling around with an 'ukulele, throwing elegant jazz riffs into tunes such as "Little Grass Shack." The crew at the store was transfixed.

"They said, 'Who are you?' " he recalled.

The 'ukulele was surging back into favor. 'Ukulele clubs had taken root, and students started treating it as a folk instrument instead of a gag.

"We have much more serious players now," UH's Yasui said. "It's not guys in raccoon coats strumming and singing silly songs."

Urged by friends, Tapia started attending 'ukulele sessions at a senior center and teaching again. At a museum show about Hawai'i, he ran into Buck Giles, leader of a Hawai'i band called the Essential Resophonics.

"Ever hear of Bill Tapia?" Tapia asked slyly.

"I think he's already passed away," Giles responded.

Tapia let him know otherwise. He took Giles up on his invitation to sit in for a song or two and quickly became the star attraction.

"We just gave him the stage," Giles said.

The two hit it off so well that the group backed up Tapia on his current CD, "Tropical Swing," a production of a small Hawaiian-music label called Moon Room Records.

In 2002, Tapia's friend and former manager, Alyssa Archambault, arranged for him to play at the 75th anniversary of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the grande dame of Waikiki hostelries.

"He's amazing," said Archambault, 27, who got to know Tapia while tracing her family's Hawaiian roots. "He'll tell you he's not the best singer, but he'll look at some lady in the audience and just melt her heart."

At the hotel celebration, Tapia was the only musician who had played at the Royal Hawaiian's grand opening in 1927. Reporters flocked to him for reminiscences of the Jazz Age crowd in their tuxes and gowns. "We didn't get dinner in 1927," he told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. "This time, we got fed!"

Tapia had been one of the Royal Hawaiian's half a dozen "musical drivers," uniformed chauffeurs who convoyed wealthy guests around the island in gleaming Packards. With Diamond Head as a backdrop, the drivers would break out their instruments and croon Hawaiian songs to their passengers.

Back at the hotel, Tapia made extra money giving lessons to stars such as Gable, Durante and Buster Crabbe. "They just wanted to learn a few chords so they could clown around at parties," he said.

Tapia said he even gave a few lessons to Arthur Godfrey. Later, Godfrey became a popular TV talk-show host whose trademark was his 'ukulele.

Next month, Tapia will be admitted to the Ukulele Hall of Fame at a convention in Santa Cruz, Calif.

"He just seemed a natural," said Sue Abbotson, a college English teacher in Rhode Island and a director of the Ukulele Hall of Fame museum.

Seeking a permanent site, the museum is a collection of instruments, sheet music, aging photos and 'ukulele whatnots scattered among its directors' homes. A portrait of Tapia has been commissioned; one day it will hang next to those of Godfrey and other 'ukulele celebrities, such as Manuel Nunes.

Nunes was a Portuguese craftsman who brought the forerunner of the ukulele to Hawai'i in 1872. When he was a boy, Tapia said, he lived across a dirt lane from Nunes and bought his first 'ukulele from him for 75 cents.

Connections such as that make Tapia yearn for the Islands.

"When I lived there, I couldn't wait to go live on the Mainland," he said. "But I was a fool. I'd love to go back and look out at the beach, and rest under the coconut trees and watch the pretty girls pass by."