Randy Rhoads, you have to give it up for him

[Dave]

I know you guys don't like heavy metal, but he was the best. Not born in england as far as i'm aware, but Ozzy was, so you get half-credit. He was better than Yngwie or Eddie and better than Ritchie Blackmore and everyone else at that whole classical metal thing.

 

[Worm]

You have to give it up for Ernest Kaai.

Ernest was the first Hawaiian-born virtuoso ukulele player and was a formidable figure in the Hawaiian music world in the first quarter of this century. Besides being adept at the ukulele, Kaai was also a superb violin, guitar and steel guitar player. By the age of 19, he was playing in and organizing ensembles. At one time, he had as many as 12 bands playing in the Islands. He not only promoted Hawaiian music in Hawaii, but on the mainland as well. But it was as a ukulele player that most remember Kaai. It was Johnny Noble, Hawaii's greatest composer, who said Kaai was "Hawaii's greatest ukulele player". Due to his musical ability, he is credited with making the ukulele into a featured instrument in Hawaiian groups. He also published the first ukulele instruction book, "The Ukulele, A Hawaiian Guitar", published in 1916. This book presented the ukulele as a sophisticated musical instrument and included exotic chords and and complicated strums. In 1940, Kaai retired to Miami, Florida, where he opened a music store and performed off and on. He died in 1962.

http://www.geocities.com/~ukulele/ukeplayers.html

 

[Dave]

That whole thing about hawaiian guitars and the way it inflluenced open tunings, and classical "spanish guitar" and that the popularity of the style meant that guitar making really took off, and this is how lots of homes wound up with someone's old guitar being left behind, and someone picking that up and becoming Randy Rhoads. You threw a curve on that one, but it all makes sense.