Popular Culture
The banjolele was the instrument played by British comedian George Formby (1904–61), who developed his own style of playing in accompaniment to his comic songs. His name is associated with the instrument more than that of any other musician.
Other artists to make eminent use of the banjolele were Wendell Hall and Roy Smeck in the United States, and Billy "Uke" Scott in Great Britain.
In P.G. Wodehouse's 1934 novel Thank You, Jeeves, valet Jeeves is driven to resign over his employer Bertie Wooster's decision to take up the banjolele.
Queen member Brian May used a banjolele in the song "Bring Back That Leroy Brown", which appeared on their third album Sheer Heart Attack, and also to compose – but not record, he used a regular ukulele instead – "Good Company" on the Night at the Opera album.
George Harrison favoured the instrument in his later years, using it in several recordings. For example, he played it on his song Any Road.
Recent users have included Jeff Claus of The Horse Flies, Alan Randall, Andy Eastwood, Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer. The instrument can be heard in the theme song to the television show Arrested Development.
Read more about this topic: Banjo Uke
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem per se, the circumstance ... which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)