Who is most famous?

Who is Japan's most famous ukulele musician? Beats me, I'm no music business professional! But, that has never stopped me from guess anyway.

If we define "famous" as an ukulele musician than even non-uke fans would know, it probably boils down to either Takagi Boo or Maki Shinji. Ukulele players in Japan seem to occasionally echo the Tiny Tim or George Formby ambience.

Takagi Boo was something of a guitarist in days past. He was also a member of the comedy team "The Drifters", who had a Saturday night variety show on Japanese TV for years.Now in his seventies, he runs his own Hawaiian-style bar in Tokyo where he performs live a couple of times a week.Although his site is in Japanese, you can find performance information under the link marked "Live". He plays primarily Hawaiian music of the Kaimana Hila variety. His daughter seems to have more or less grown up in Hawaii.According to a recent TV program, she seems to live there still.

Maki Shinji is a comedian that uses the ukulele has a very integral part of his act. Maki's trademark is variations on Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai. He varies the lyrics to discuss surprises, disappointments, shocks, and vexations. You can hear one version on his downloads page. It is the top link. Below are also two MP3 of "scary stories" for download. Or at least that is what is there today.

He has also put out CDs that are available on the Internet. I haven't found any pages in English about Maki Shinji, so the link above is to his official Japanese web site.

According to the Japanese profile on Maki's site, he was born in 1934 and began a career in entertainment in 1957. A quick punch of the calculator reveals, like Takagi Boo, he's been at it a while.

Probably Japanese ukulele musicians most famous outside of Japan would be Petty Booka. They seem to be fairly active in the US and some of their music is available for download at the i-Tunes music store. If you have never heard of them, they have videos available on their web site.

There are--or were--many other famous and popular ukulele players in years gone by who have had their careers truncated by mortality. If I can ever get the time to work on a history write-up, they may put in their respective cameos.

Shortly, I will begin with individual uke players for uke fans.