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John King, Who Made Ukulele Ring with Bach Dies

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John King
John King adored Hawaii, though he lived there for only a few years as a boy. The Hawaiian room in his Florida home was stuffed with hundreds upon hundreds of hula dolls, leis and other artifacts.

He once owned 400 Hawaiian shirts, more than enough to wear a different one every day of the year which he was proud to do. Is it a surprise that Mr. King played the ukulele?

And boy, did he play that ukulele. His huge hands and stocky wrists darted and danced up, down and across the tiny instruments strings in a way that few, if any, players have ever attempted.

Mr. King resurrected a guitar technique from the time of Bach to play a piece that was almost certainly never before tried on a ukulele, Bachs Partita No. 3, and went on to play other difficult classical works with dazzling mastery. He opened pathways of sound unimaginable to those whose memories of the ukulele involve Arthur Godfrey, Elvis Presley and, of course, Tiny Tim.

The Journal of the Society for American Music last year called Mr. King perhaps the worlds only truly classical ukulele virtuoso.

Mr. Kings death at 55 on April 3 at his home in St. Petersburg, Fla., sent shock waves through the ukulele universe, which has widened with enthusiasts now clustering on the Internet and at festivals around the country. His wife, Debi, said that Mr. King died of a heart attack, suddenly and completely unexpectedly.

In one of the tributes that pervade this online universe, Jim Beloff, a leading ukulele player, calls Mr. Kings work in classical ukulele the finest in the world, and the finest we will ever see in a long time.

Tom Walsh, a board member of the Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum, said in an interview last week that Mr. King was adored by the ukulele community, most of whom faced an inescapable realization: I could never possibly play like that.

The foundation of Mr. Kings achievement was reviving a Baroque guitar technique and applying it to the ukulele. The technique involves playing each succeeding note in a melodic line on a different string. The ukulele which is tuned so that the four strings go not from the lowest to the highest note but instead run G, C, E, A turns out to be great for doing this. (An illustration of ukulele tuning can be found at theuke.com.) The result is a bell-like quality of sound in which individual notes over-ring one another, producing an effect that some compare to a harp or harpsichord.

The people Bach originally wrote this music for must have been fabulous musicians, because this stuff is really hard to play, Mr. King wrote in an essay. My heart is in my throat whenever I play these pieces in concert.

In another essay he expounded on the sheer difficulty: The truth is its a crazy way to play the uke; ease of execution is all but sacrificed, subordinated to whatever it takes to get that shimmering, harplike sound. It works for me, because when I play it that way, the ukulele sings.

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