An abbreviated uke timeline
We could reach all the way back to the ukulele's 19th-century origins and wend our way through Arthur Godfrey and all the others who popularized the ukulele. We really do revere the instrument's rich heritage and its trajectory in pop-culture history. But we'd also like to get back to practicing our newly purchased Hilo starter soprano uke. So for now, we'll start our super-brief timeline in 1968, with a dubious character.
1968 Tiny Tim's Tiptoe Through the Tulips. An accomplished street performer for years, the long-haired, falsetto-voiced ukulele player became a favorite among the hippie set, and in the late '60s found himself booked on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson (where, in a highly rated publicity stunt, he famously married Miss Vicki). His version of the 1926 song Tiptoe Through the Tulips became a smash. But by the early '70s and the advent of harder-sounding rock, Tiny Tim and his vaudevillian style fell drastically out of fashion.
1979 The Jerk. Steve Martin (actually Lyle Ritz) "plays" the 1926 chestnut Tonight You Belong to Me to Bernadette Peters. It's a genuinely sweet scene, until Peters finishes off the song with a blaring cornet solo.
1993 Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World, by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. It's the gorgeous, haunting medley by the Hawaiian singer (known as Iz); it would take a few years for Hollywood to start exploiting it as a poignant backdrop, but ....
1998-2002Iz's medley was used over the ending credits of Meet Joe Black and an eToys ad during the Super Bowl (both in 1998), and on several other movie and TV soundtracks, including Finding Forrester and 50 First Dates. The most widely remembered use of the song was in the 1992 episode of ER in which Dr. Mark Green dies. (I still haven't been able to watch that episode.)
2006 Jake Shimabukuro. His name isn't well-known outside of the cult of ukulele, but the Hawaiian-born musician is the instrument's current Hendrix. His version of George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps went viral, and has snagged over 4.7 million hits on YouTube.
2008 Noah and the Whale's 5 Years Time. You may or may not know the tune by name, but think of the lilting chorus "sun, sun, su-u-un," and you'll likely remember it from various soundtracks, a 2008 Saturn Outlook commercial and trailers for Jim Carrey's Yes Man.
2008 Rachel Goodrich's Lightbulb. The vaudeville-inspired indie pop song hawks the Crayola Glow Dome and was featured in an episode of Showtime's Weeds.
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