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Blue Roses Falling-Jake Shimabukuro-Special Story Attached

God Told Me To Play The Ukulele!I am just slightly more than a beginner uke player. My father played the old folks songs like" Tom Dooley" and "The Fox" and showed me how to play chords when I was young. I played guitar through high school until my forties and enjoyed it but I never excelled. My wife and I became IZ fans a few years ago in Maui and I decided to learn "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on my Dad's old baritone uke once when she left town for work for a week just to be romantic. Never once in Maui did I see a uke or any players or anything of the "uke sort". Just IZ on the radio and we bought his CD there. When we went back to Kuaui, every day I encountered something "uke", compelling me to continue. From the guy on the crummy hotel TV giving uke lessons on Oahu before we flew over to the guy on the shuttle bus that played and crooned very well that was very inspiring. We bumped into a great uke sale on the way to our camp site on Polihale. The Nat'l Parks worker, Clifford who was the greatest guy I ever met, tuned me up and gave me a two hour lesson on the beach in Polihale which is at the end of the earth! He told me to always "play one for the Mastah!" Also, the guys at Ke'e and Hanalei were great players. What with all the inspiration I ever had and kept having by chance, I kept telling my wife; God is telling me to take up the ukulele, of course with tongue in cheek! One terrible day my mother was diagnosed with an extremely rare and cruel brain disease called CJD. It's a distant relative of BSE (mad cow) disease but not the same. It had terrible effects on her and rapidly, she began losing her faculties. My mother, an accomplished artist, could no longer draw a stick figure or over time, hold a pencil. CJD brings great fear, anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations because victim's brains just dissolve and no longer function like ours causing the frequent need for extraordinary amounts of powerful medications to keep her calm. I went most nights to her nursing home for the memory impaired and kept her company. During those visits I may have found the purpose of any "calling" because I found that the one thing that would calm my mother down. Instead of nurses wrestling her to the bed and administering the "cocktail" of meds, I would play my ukulele for her. She loved to hear the music or just hear me play I think. I would play until she fell asleep or calmed down to take meds by mouth. I even found on a CJD website that CJD victims like Hawaiian music particularly. It's true! Long before I ever heard of Jake Shimabukuro, I bought a Kamaka Tenor uke at a music store on the big island. This is the type of instrument he plays. The song of his I found irresistible was not his big hit, "Gently Weeps" but "Blue Roses Falling". I worked hard and finally mastered it (to an amateur degree). It's my most sophisticated accomplishment in music besides Blackbird on the guitar. I was really attached to the song but never even thought what it was about. Well Jake came to Atlanta recently and was just terrific, awesome, really on! I talked to him during intermission and as I nervously stumbled through my words I told him that I had learned Blue Roses Falling, and nothing else. He played a song or two after the break and started talking about ALL the uke players he was meeting in Atlanta and how a guy in the audience had just started playing ukulele and had requested Blue Roses Falling. That blew me away because I was sure he meant me! Then I started recording the following video where he starts by explaining how he came to write the song. My wife and I were stunned to hear he had a friend whose Grandmother was dying and in her last days, hallucinated about seeing blue roses over her bed and the petals would fall gently down upon her. I later told Jake he would never know what he said meant to me. I hope he reads this. I hope God did tell me to play the ukulele, and maybe Jake too! And maybe someday, someway, he'll tell you to do something too. Be listening.For a tribute to my wonderful Mom see:
http://...
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Channel: Music
Uploaded: June 20, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Author: Youkuleler

Length: 00:06:32
Rating: 4.67
Views: 2324

Tags: Shimabukura Kamaka Ukulele Jake CJD

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