Chief Noda, as he was affectionately called, would be 64 years old on 29th March 2021. When he brought his Ubass for the Beatles’ Carpool Karaoke jam session on Thursday 12th July 2018, Chifuru Noda certainly wouldn’t have known that he’d not live to see his 64th, 63rd, or 62nd birthday. None of us knew any better at the time.
Join us to celebrate the music he loved so much. See the list of songs from Chief Noda’s Birthday Party Open Mic in Zoom.
At well past our 9:30 pm ending time, we wanted to end our Beatles Carpool Karaoke on a high note rather than a depressing “Hey Jude.”
How about “Obladi Oblada” ? The song in C major is a tad too high for my voice. The original is in Bb major. No wonder.
As usual in our jam sessions, we get bolder and bolder the later it gets. By 9 pm, the ten chords in “Hey Jude” don’t look formidable anymore. How can we sing “Let It Be” and exclude “Hey Jude” the last number in the Beatles Carpool Karaoke? Besides, Paul McCarney sings it in the same key as the song sheet from San Jose Ukulele Club.
After spending over an hour working on “Let It Be” and half an hour on “When I’m Sixty-Four” we spent comparatively less time on the remaining three from the 15 songs on the Beatles Carpool Karaoke. While we were familiar with most songs, playing them on the ukulele was another matter.
Our coach showed us how to make an illusively simple three-chord song like “Love Me Do” interesting. It’s sometimes the case that three-chord songs are not necessarily easy to sing or rhythmically easy to play. So far, I’ve compiled more than 60 songs that require only the three chords of C, F, and G. It will be another exercise to play them well.
What next, after “Let It Be”?
Can we squeeze in another song from the Beatles Carpool Karaoke before our usual break at half-time?
Jim, the bassist from Jamaica Plain, scrolled through the song list on my iPad with me and spotted something that’s a bit more upbeat.
I said, “How about ‘When I’m Thirty-Four” ?”
As usual, I began our 7 o’clock ukulele jam session with an easy song, one that everyone knows with few easy chords. This being the Beatles Carpool Karaoke, I chose “Let It Be,” using San Jose Ukulele Club’s version in the original key of C major, with just four chords, rather than the G-major transposition with nine chords in the version in Richard G’s Songbook.
What can you do with “Let It Be” if you already know it very well?
What a great idea to travel down memory lane singing songs you wrote in the different locations of your home town! That’s exactly what Paul McCartney did in Liverpool recently. The 24-minute Youtube video moved me to tears as “Let It Be” did for James Corden, host of “The Late, Late Show” in London.
Continue reading “Corden & McCartney sing Beatles songs in Liverpool”
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