Jennie Durkee’s 1918 ‘American Way’

BY VICTOR PRANCHÈRE | FROM THE FALL 2026 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE

At the end of the 1910s, when the ukulele craze was spreading all over the United States, many professional musicians were attempting to make sense of an instrument that was mainly considered a toy. One of them, Jennie M. Durkee, developed her own virtuosic way of playing and published some of the most complex ukulele music of her time. 

Durkee was born on December 5, 1877, in Chicago, the second child of George B. Durkee and Swedish-born Christine Anderson. Her father had ties to the musical world; as a mechanical engineer, he went to work in the 1880s for one of Chicago’s most important music companies, Lyon & Healy, and helped transform it from a music publisher into an instrument maker.

Jennie Durkee’s main instrument was the guitar, which she learned as a child. A talented student, she studied in St. Louis under William Foden, one of America’s most famous guitarists at the time. She then started to work as a music teacher in Chicago before moving to Denver, Colorado, in 1903. 

Having mastered several instruments, Durkee established herself as a teacher of piano, guitar, banjo, and mandolin. As a performer, she was particularly noted for her playing of the terz guitar, a shorter-scale version of the instrument tuned a third above regular tuning (her own instrument was built by her father). Her return to Chicago in 1911 allowed her to establish a relationship with the Lyon & Healy company, which relied on skilled musicians like her to demonstrate the quality of its instruments.

It was toward the end of 1917, it seems, that Durkee started to play the ukulele. She quickly developed a keen interest for the instrument and set to raise its standard of playing. In early December of that year she started to demonstrate a “new, simpler and far more effective manner” of playing. She also started to arrange a set of famous music pieces as ukulele solos, which Lyon & Healy published as The Artist’s Collection of Ukulele Solos in 1918. With that book she was ready to promote her new style, which she called the “American Way” of playing the ukulele. In 1919, Durkee released a method called The American Way: Instructions for Playing Solos. In 1920 she combined this with The Artist’s Collection and released The American Way of Playing Ukulele Solos.

The core idea behind her method was to play the ukulele exclusively with a special plectrum she had created for the Lyon & Healy company. Instead of the harder materials used for mandolin picks, her plectrum was made of felt. The idea, she later revealed, came to her following the request of two female students, who were complaining that strumming on the uke would damage their nails. But she soon realized that this also allowed her to get a better and more nuanced tone out of her own instrument.

The felt pick also offered the advantage of increased volume when no amplification was available. This allowed her to perform comfortably onstage with accompaniment by harp or guitar. She even played once in front of an audience of 1,500 with organ accompaniment, her ukulele “clearly heard throughout the hall,” according to spectators. 

Durkee’s virtuosity can clearly be seen in her arrangements. They include fast single-line passages and duo-style playing, and make full use of the instrument’s range (sometimes requiring 15 frets). A three-page version of a serenade for piano by German composer Moritz Moszkowski showcased all these techniques, making it one of the most complex ukulele solos ever published. Her book also contained an arrangement of “Stars and Stripes Forever,” an early occurrence of the piece as a ukulele solo that Jesse Kalima would turn into a hit decades later.

How successful was her method? By 1920, the publication was in its sixth edition, and more than 45,000 of her felt picks had reportedly been sold by Lyon & Healy. In her adverts, Durkee even started complaining about imitators.

Indeed, other authors were following Durkee’s steps without giving credit for her ideas. In April 1919, Lyon & Healy released another publication advocating the exclusive use of a felt pick: the Elite Method for Ukulele by Arling Shaeffer. At around the same time, the Chart Music Publishing House, another Chicago-based company, issued Will D. Moyer’s Up-to-Date Collection of Ukulele Solos, which included a section on the “plectrum or mandolin style,” and started to sell the Eureka ukulele felt pick, intended for, the adverts said, the “American way of playing the ukulele.” None mentioned Durkee’s name. 

The American Way of playing was, to some, tied to ideas of superiority, as evidenced by a 1922 article about Durkee’s work titled “Ukulele Said to Be Civilized Now.” It read: “Miss Durkee does not permit her trained ukulele to repeat the same lines . . . It never gets a chance to revert to type, to quaver and to sob ‘Alo-o-oha Ooeeeeeee!’ It must play proper pieces in a cultivated tone. As evidence of its superior education, it generally does the ‘Humoresque,’ ‘The Sextette,’ from Lucia; the ‘Miserere’ from Il Trovatore.” The journalist probably didn’t know that not only was “Aloha Oe” part of Durkee’s ukulele repertoire, but also that Hawaiian-born George Kia Nahaolelua had been playing excerpts from Verdi’s Il Trovatore as ukulele solos on stage since as early as 1914. 

From 1917 to 1922, the ukulele remained at the center of Durkee’s activity. She showcased it in many concerts in various parts of the United States, often being praised for sounding like a harp, or even a small orchestra. In April 1922 she did some test recordings for Victor Records, but they were not issued. Had they been commercially released, Durkee would have gone down in history as the first person to ever record a solo instrumental on the ukulele—a role Frank Ferera would fulfill just a few months later. 

During this period she also strengthened her ties with Lyon & Healy, and by 1922 she was referred to as head of their ukulele department. Her responsibilities included promoting the instrument. By 1922 Lyon & Healy had understood the potential of radio as a promotional platform, and in May of that year Durkee started to play the ukulele on radio shows sponsored by the company. 

In 1923 she moved to Los Angeles, where radio took an increasingly important place in her life. She quickly became a regular guest of radio station KHJ, where she would mainly play guitar and ukulele. She was still promoting her American Way of playing, though it was not the only style to be heard; on one occasion in November 1925, she was featured in a program alongside two other ukulele players: Tom Murray and a young Bennie Nawahi.

Durkee continued to appear on radio until 1931, adding new pieces to her ukulele repertoire along the way. Her activity slowed down afterward, though she continued to perform professionally until 1935. By 1940 she wasn’t working anymore and when she died on October 31, 1941, she had been largely forgotten.

The author thanks Tom Walsh, Beth Lathrop, Keri Armendariz, Nathan Sarr, and Jim Farrington for their help with this article.