Uncle Leonard Kwan recorded an instrumental medley of “Yellow Ginger Lei” and “E Huli Huli Ho`i Mai” and since then the two songs just seem to go together. Ledward adds one more tune to the mix, he often includes these two along with his family arrangement of “Radio Hula.” In this clip we actually started with “Yellow Ginger Lei” first but before the end all three tunes had shown up.

Led used two tunings during this session. He played “Na Lei Hawaii (Song of the Islands)” in standard tuning (G C E A). For the Sonny Chillingworth slack-key piece “Whee Ha Swing,” Led used a “Wahine” tuning on his tenor ukulele. Wahine slack-key tunings use a major 7th note to create a major 7th chord when the open strings are strummed. As he details in the video, Led tunes his first string down one full-step to G and the third string down a half-step to B. 00:00 “Na Lei Hawaii (Song of the Islands)” (Standard tuning, G C E A) 05:32 “Whee Ha Swing” (Sonny Chillingworth) (Wahine tuning, G B E G)

MAUI CHIMES