Description

Nicomede Music Co., Published 1936. Sheet music, 64 pp.; 30 cm; plate 32779; illustrated paper cover printed in dark green on cream, a photographic portrait of Lucas in a decorative frame, with a red banner across the head reading "Best Method - Opinion of all Schools." In Good Plus condition. Toning and mild soiling to covers, with light creasing and bumping to the corners, edge wear along the fore-edge, and a few scattered spots of foxing. Binding tight (staple bound). Light pencil check marks in the margins of pp. 48-49 and a few light pencil marks elsewhere in the music. Pages otherwise unmarked.Volume I of a three-volume Hawaiian (lap steel) guitar course, complete in itself. The 64 pages run from the rudiments of music through tuning, holding the steel, the slide, the vibrato, harmonics and barre chords, closing with a lesson on how to play popular music on the Hawaiian guitar, with more than fifty graded solos, duets, trios and quartettes along the way. The title page carries the series statement "Complete In Three Volumes" and the cover is marked Volume I; p. 64 ends "Continued in Volume Two." Volumes II and III were published separately and are not present.Nick Lucas (1897-1982) was the first guitarist to record a solo guitar instrumental ("Teasin' the Frets," 1922) and the first to have a signature instrument built for him, the Gibson Nick Lucas Special, whose body outline Gibson later drew on for the Les Paul. He topped the charts in 1929 with "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," introduced in Gold Diggers of Broadway. Nicomede Music of Altoona, Pennsylvania was also Lloyd Loar's publisher; Loar's Modern Method is advertised on the back cover of this copy alongside the Imperial, Waikiki, National, King and Koloa folios, several of them arranged by Lucas.Contents: Preface; Rudiments of Music; Stringing and Holding the Guitar; Open String Lesson; Open String Exercises; E or 1st String and Melody; C# or 2nd and A or 3rd Strings; E or 4th, A or 5th and E or 6th Strings; Addition High Notes on E String; Time Lesson and Solos; Melody Studies; Please Find My Name (Solo); Dusky Skies (Duet); Scales in Octaves; Chord Playing; Melodious Chord Study; The Vibrato; Vibrato Waltz (Duet); A Little Action; Cut Time; Musical Puzzle Solos; Dreaming (Duet); That Hawaiian Girl; Kalina Waltz (Duet); The Slide; Neath the Coppery Lantern Moon (Solo); Study on Dotted Notes; Old Folks At Home; Novelty Scales; Swing Waltz (Duet); Hawaiian Waters (Duet); Sweet Marie (Quartette); Triplets; Honolulu Bound (Solo); Scale of G Major; Kua Lua (Trio); Hawaiian Highway March (Solo); Natona Waltz (Duet); Full Of Fun (Solo); Scale of E Major; Six-Eight Time; Beautiful Hawaiian Moon (Solo); Key of C Major; America (with words); Beautiful Hawaii (Solo); Barre Chords and A Minor; Scarlet Sage (Solo); Syncopation; Chromatic Scale and the Tremolo; Key of F Major; Harmonics; The Sunset Evening Prayer (with words); Hawaiian Sunset (Solo); Hula Lu Waltz (Duet); On the Sands of Waikiki (Duet); How To Play Popular Music on Hawaiian Guitar; Won't You Come Back To Me? (Song); Wally, Wally (Solo).