Among Hawaii’s musicians redefining the traditional scope of the ukulele, Benny Chong reigns supreme as a virtuoso jazz player. Best known as a founding member and guitarist for Don Ho’s backing group, the Aliis, Chong has been honored with a Hawai’i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2012 he won a Hoku award for Jazz Album of the Year for his CD, “Ukulele Jazz: Live in Concert at Hilo, Hawaii.”
In the world of solo ukulele playing, very few musicians specialize in jazz. Besides Chong, jazz ukulele pioneers include the great Bill Tapia, who released his first album, “Tropical Swing,” at the age of 96 in 2004, and Lyle Ritz, whose albums “How About Uke?” and “50th State Jazz” were very popular in Hawaii in the late 1950s.
“I am one of the very few who play jazz on the ukulele,” says Chong. “Ukulele was my first instrument back in the ’50s, and everyone then played the same songs like ‘Hilo March,’ and I felt it could play more. I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Stan Kenton and so on, and that’s how I got started playing jazz. But it’s a challenge to play it on four strings and make it sound right.”
The complexity and sophistication of his improvisational skill is evident on his impressive debut solo album, “Ukulele Jazz,” released in 2005. It included such classic standards as “Georgia,” “Cry Me a River,” “I Remember Clifford” and Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia.” In the liner notes to the album, University of Hawaii music professor Byron Yasui wrote that Chong’s dazzling playing “includes novel left and right hand techniques” and “chord voicings new to the ukulele.”
“I had learned Georgia on guitar and it was easy to transpose it to ukulele,” Chong notes. “I moved the fourth string up an octave higher.”
On his Hoku-winning live album with Yasui on bass (they perform together as B2), he interpreted more standards, including “Cheek to Cheek,” Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll” and “My Funny Valentine.”
“The result is an intelligent, fun and incredible performance of jazz standards . . . it will definitely blow your mind,” proclaimed multi-Hoku-winning bassist Nathan Aweau.
As far as his jazz style, Chong prefers a more melodic approach.
“I’m more in the contemporary bebop era because of my age,” he says. “I would go to my uncle’s house and hear jazz music, and that’s how I really latched on to it. In the ’50s, when everyone was listening to Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the Comets, I was listening to the jazz greats.”
Chong taught himself to play the ukulele when he was about 11 years old. By the age of 20, he put the ukulele away to concentrate on guitar.
In 1961, he was among a group of five young men recruited by the U.S. Air Force for the USAF Band at Hickam Air Force Base. After two years of touring as the Hawaiian Aliis, they returned to Hawaii, to be recruited by Ho as his new band, the Aliis. They would go on to make Hawaii musical history.
“A couple of weeks ago, some of the guys got together,” Chong reports. “It was nice to see them. When we got out of the Air Force and we got together with Don, and the rest is history. It was like a party, all these great entertainers would come in.”
After three decades playing guitar, Chong finally took up the ukulele again.
“I started playing the ukulele again in the later part of my life after about 30 years,” he explains. “Byron Yasui asked if I could do a concert as a ukulele player at the Honolulu Academy of Arts (later renamed the Honolulu Museum of Art) with Jake Shimabukuro. And I just started to play the ukulele again.”
A live album of the event in April 2000, “The Art of Solo Ukulele,” was released and is available at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s gift shop. It includes his interpretations of “The Way You Look Tonight” and “All the Things You Are.”
These days Chong travels the world, touring Japan, Australia, Thailand and New Zealand, showcasing the humble ukulele as a jazz instrument. While he’s played on our island before, at the old Maui Surf hotel, his performance Sunday at the Hula Grill Ka’anapali, marks his first as a ukulele soloist.
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Great news: The voice of UB40, singer Ali Campbell, is back fronting the band that has sold more than 70 million records, along with founding members, vocalist Astro and keyboardist Mickey Virtue. The legendary, British reggae group will play the MACC on Jan. 30. Details on tickets coming soon.
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For the last five years, Maui musicians have paid homage to British rock gods Led Zeppelin with an annual Zeptember show at Mulligans on the Blue in Wailea. While we’re a couple of days into October, this year’s Zeptember VI event will be held Saturday at the restaurant.
As always, it will feature a major lineup of Maui musicians. It includes, in no particular order, Danielle Delaunay, Cheryl Rae, Roger McKinley, Rick Bodinus, Elaine Ryan, Pete Sebastian, Gretchen Rhodes, Pete Grand, Shea Derrick, Nils Rosenblad, Byron Townsend, Chris Sendrey, Kai Katchadourian, Jerry Kovarsky, Joy Rene, Jack Gist, Ani Hesse, Tim Hackbarth, Marcus Johnson, Kaipo Haleakala and Pete Hamilton.
“I’m excited about the show,” says Rosenblad, Zeptember musical director/guitarist. “We have worked very hard to put together a set list that is both fresh yet delivers as many of the gems as possible. And we have a very strong cast of performers with the possibility of adding more if schedules work out.”
As far as who will sing some of Zep’s classics, this year Rhodes has “Stairway to Heaven.
“It’s a delicate thing who gets what song, but everyone’s been super cool,” Rosenblad explains.
In July, deluxe editions of Led Zeppelin’s final three studio albums, “Presence,” “In Through the Out Door” and “Coda,” were released. As with the previous deluxe editions, all three were newly remastered by the band’s guitarist, Jimmy Page, and were accompanied by previously unreleased music compiled by Page. Among the rarities on “Coda,” there are versions of “Friends” and “Four Hands” recorded in 1972, when Page and Robert Plant traveled to India to perform with the Bombay Orchestra.
“A lot of us grew up with the music,” Rosenblad continues. “I first saw them when I was 15. And the people who didn’t grow up with it got turned on to it later. The depth of what was going on with them was incredible. Musically they were amazing.”
When he’s not conjuring up Led Zep magic, Rosenbled can be heard playing with the Gina Martinelli Band on Sundays at Diamonds Ice Bar & Grill in Kihei, and digging the blues with Kona Storm at Fleetwood’s on Front St. in Lahaina.
* Zeptember VI will be held from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday at Mulligans on the Blue in Wailea. Tickets are $25 in advance and are available from Mulligans, Enchantress Boutique in Wailea, 808 Deli and Scuba Shack in Kihei, Alice in Hulaland in Paia, Requests Music in Wailuku and Still Smokin’ in Kahului, Kihei and Lahaina. Admission is $35 at the door.
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Keyboard legend Booker T. Jones will play the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Nov. 5. As leader of Booker T. and the MGs, he released such classic instrumental hits as “Green Onions,” “Hang ‘Em High,” “Time Is Tight” and “Melting Pot.”
The former house organist for Stax Records, Jones has recorded with many musical greats from Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and John Lee Hooker, to Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Neil Young.
A recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, his most recent album, ‘Sound the Alarm,’ received rave reviews.
“On his new disc, Booker T. Jones’ organ pops with the same ripeness that it did on Booker T. and the MGs’ 1962 hit, ‘Green Onions,’ ” praised Rolling Stone. “However, now he’s teamed up with a handful of contemporary collaborators – including Gary Clark Jr., Mayer Hawthorne, Anthony Hamilton and Estelle – to help him push the blues and R&B he built his storied career on.”
* Booker T. Jones, with special guests Wavetrain, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5 in Castle Theater at the MACC. Tickets are $20 to $60 (plus applicable fees). For details, call 242-7469 or visit .
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Ebb & Flow Arts founder Robert Pollock is currently in Mexico, participating in Festival Internacional Camerata 21, an annual new music festival held in the historic city of Xalapa. During the event, which runs through Saturday, Pollock will offer two lectures and perform a solo recital featuring works by Mario Davidovsky, Roger Sessions, Jose Saldana, Olivier Messiaen and his own compositions.
There are plans for an Ebb & Flow Arts co-sponsored guest residence in Hawaii, for Mexican composer and Xalapa festival director Emil Awad, by 2017.
