Ukulele Legend Plays on at Age 101
Courtesy of
MCT
At 101, ukulele player Bill Tapia is age-defying.
He answers his cell phone for an interview — yes, he has and uses a cell phone.
Tapia is believed to be the oldest active musician in the U.S. — and possibly the world.
While he often needs help getting around the stage, his hands and his mind work fine.
For example: Upon hearing my last name, he was immediately able to recall playing music with my great uncle in the 1960s. He not only remembered it, but he talked for five minutes about stuff that happened almost 50 years ago.
"I'll be damned," Tapia says. "He was a good piano player."
As for his hands, they're still doing what they do best — strumming the strings. There was so much interest in a San Francisco performance of his in April that a second show had to be added because the first sold out.
They don't call him "The Duke of the Uke" for nothing.
"He put on a tremendous show," says Pat Wolk of the Fresno (Calif.) Folklore Society. "Everybody wanted their photograph taken with him. He sold Lord knows how many CDs. Now he has another CD out. One hundred and one? Are you going to have a CD out when you're 101?"
Putting out that CD, "Livin' It Live," is just one of Tapia's age-defying acts.
On the CD, a live recording, there's a part in the song "Undecided" where the crowd oohs and awes because he's playing the ukulele behind his head.
Tapia still teaches music — twice a week from his Southern California home. His ukulele students have ranged in age from 8 to 80.
He recently got an offer to play in Japan, and, of course, he wants to do it.
"I want to keep going until I'm gone," he says.
Believing in himself has gotten Tapia a long way in the music business.
He was 7 when he first started playing the ukulele. A native Hawaiian, the ukulele was almost something he was born into.
He learned from the original ukulele players and — get this — came up with his own version of "Stars and Stripes Forever" in 1918 at age 10. Get him to play today and he might introduce it by saying, "Here's a song I performed during World War I."
As he got older, Tapia wanted to play jazz, so he took up the guitar and banjo instead.
He led a big band, was a vaudeville performer, played on cruise ships and eventually became a music teacher.
It would take about 60 years until Tapia started to play the ukulele again.
And now, it's turned into another career for him and something else to keep him going.
"I don't know what I would do if I didn't play. I feel restless," Tapia says. "I can't read the damn music anymore, but if you're close up by me I can see you. If you're six or eight feet away, all I see is a blur. But I get along like nothing is happening and I play."
Nowadays, word of Tapia spreads on YouTube.
Imagine that, a guy born on New Year's Day in 1908 — a guy who pre-dates the MP3, CD, cassette and eight-track tape — getting his ukulele music passed around via YouTube.
Ask Tapia and he'll tell you — it feels good.
"It's like taking good medicine," he says.
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(c) 2009, The Fresno Bee (Fresno, Calif.).
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