Post #449555 by drdork on Sat, Apr 25, 2009 4:28 AM

Basilh, belated thanks for your explanation. I noticed a dozen occurrences of the hula lick in your clip (though I didn't check if each one was a unique variation).

Needless to say, Frank Zappa was not a Hawaiian guitarist. He didn't use the lick as you describe. He didn't play it between verses and choruses of a Hawaiian song. And he played it pretty much the same every time (transposing it into an appropriate key).

In particular, he always started it with the third and then the root of the I chord, two notes that seem distinctly optional in Hawaiian usage of the lick. For example, they didn't occur in the two versions of Lovely Hula Hands that I checked.

If FZ learned the lick off a record, it's conceivable that we might be able to determine what that record was. It would have to have a variation of the lick that matched the way FZ subsequently played it.

On the other hand, the Mothers had a ten-day engagement at Da Swamp in Waikiki in April 1966. Perhaps FZ learned the lick in person from a Hawaiian musician at that time.

[ Edited by: drdork 2009-04-25 04:31 ]