Television offered a golden opportunity for the instrument. In 1950, the popular television host Arthur Godfrey, sporting a Hawaiian shirt, actually gave lessons to millions of viewers right in their living rooms. Plastic ukuleles proliferated— $5.95 each—and 1,700,000 ukulele players were born. Even Americans who'd never picked up an instrument couldn’t help developing a soft spot for the uke when it was played by Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, and Elvis Presley. (Blue Hawaii was Presley’s biggest box-office hit, and the soundtrack was number one on the Billboard charts for 5 months.) For a while it seemed like the ukulele had it all: a high-class reputation on the silver screen and folksy appeal as the people’s instrument.

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Then came the ukepocalypse. For kids doing the Twist and rocking around the clock, the ukulele looked and sounded like a toy, compared to the thunderous electrified guitar sounds they heard from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. “If a kid has a uke in his hand, he’s not going to get in much trouble,” Arthur Godfrey had said, apparently unaware that he'd put his finger on the uke’s fatal weakness.

Even as early as 1951, the National Association of Music Merchants attributed swelling guitar sales to “the desire of persons who learned to play the ukulele in its recent popularity upswing to master the more advanced instrument.” And on February 9, 1964, 74 million viewers of a popular variety show watched a typical ukulele act—a music hall artist clad in gold lame and singing and strumming her heart out—followed by four teens from Liverpool. As if the Fab Four playing “She Loves You” on Ed Sullivan weren’t crushing enough for the little uke, Tiny Tim tiptoed through the tulips on late-night television in 1967, consigning the ukulele to a two- decades-long image of creepy emasculation, absurdity, and plain irrelevance.

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Then, decades later, a new generation of musicians jaded by electric guitars and mostly unaware of either the uke’s squareness or its Tiny-Tim-related disrepute began to tinker with the instrument. Beginning in the 1980s, some rock ‘n’ rollers began to introduce the ukulele—in some instances, to sound a note of folksy authenticity; in others, to explore more intimate, spontaneous and personal aspects of music making. Paul McCartney strummed one on his 2002 tour as a tribute to fellow Beatle George Harrison, a serious ukulele player and a devotee of the British music hall ukulele tradition. Harrison later gave his blessing to the ukulele revival by penning an introduction to Jumpin’ Jim (Beloff)’s 60s Uke-In Songbook: “Everybody should have and play a uke. It’s so simple to carry with you and it is one instrument you can’t play and not laugh! It’s so sweet and also very old.”

The pop artists most identified with the ukulele, however are Steven Swartz of Songs From a Random House, Zach Condon of Beirut, and Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. In some cases, these artists have attempted to replace the ubiquitous guitar with a sweeter and gentler sound, in others, a less familiar sound that would surprise audiences. “When you have a guitar, people are going to make judgments about what they’re going to hear, but with ukulele, the field’s open, and it’s a much more musically versatile instrument that people are aware of,” Swartz has said.