A Song for Anna - Ohta San

According to the Ukulele Hall of Fame, “A Song for Anna” was Herb Ohta’s biggest international hit and the biggest selling ukulele song of all time. It was supposedly written for him by French composer Andre Popp and was originally recorded in 1974. A version of the song was more recently released on the 2006 album by Daniel Ho and Herb Ohta, Jr. entitled STEP 2: ‘UKULELES IN PARADISE 2. I originally heard the song on the Legends of the Ukulele and found it as one of my favorites on the album.

The beauty of the song is that it isn’t entirely difficult to play. Once again, I went to Dominator’s tab page to find the tablature for the song, you can get it here song_for_anna.pdf.

Below are a couple of versions found on YouTube. The first is Herb Ohta, Jr. and Daniel Ho performing the song. The other is my feeble attempt at the song. This is my first posting of actually playing a song on YouTube, so please be nice!

White Sandy Beach

I thought it might be interesting to find specific songs that are fun to play on the ukulele and link up some videos, tab and other stuff for each song. I’m hoping that this will give people who are looking to learn a specific song a good place to go.

For this post, I’d thought I’d start with Brudda Iz and his version of White Sandy Beach with words and music by Willy Dann. It’s a great tune and you can find tabs, chords and lyrics at the following sites;

Dominator Uke Tabs - Intro (Low G)

Ukulele Strummers - Chords and Lyrics

Below are some videos that may help learn the song, starting of course with Brudda Iz himself. I’ve included some instructional videos by Jody Kamisato of Ukulele Hale that are very helpful.

This is a great way to learn the song, set up karaoke style so you can just strum along.