How Rock ‘n’ Roll Made the Ukulele Cool—Again
STORY AND PHOTOS BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCZY | FROM THE SUMMER 2025 ISSUE OF UKULELE MAGAZINE
After America’s first big love affair with the ukulele reached its peak in the late 1920s, the instrument’s popularity began to wane with the approach of the Great Depression. As a result, even large instrument manufacturers like the Martin Guitar Company of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, felt the pinch: Martin produced more than 14,000 ukes in 1926; by 1933, they only made a total of around 730. Other big companies, including Harmony and Regal, continued churning out mostly inexpensive, painted wood ukes, many adorned with eye-popping graphics aimed at luring young buyers. By the time America entered World War II in 1941, the ukulele was all but a souvenir of a bygone era.
It wasn’t until the post-WWII years that the ukulele made a significant comeback. Its revitalized popularity in America was driven by two factors. One was the widespread availability of inexpensive instruments made from injection-molded plastics. The other was the astonishing popularity of radio and TV star Arthur Godfrey, a talented ukulele player who regularly appeared on a number of national broadcasts. Uke sales skyrocketed from an estimated 26,000 sold in 1948 to more than 1.7 million in 1951.
Then in the early 1960s, the ultimate uke-killer raised its six-stringed head: the electric guitar. Almost overnight, uke-toting kids who once strummed sweet tunes like “Heart and Soul” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream” wanted to rock out to the raucous sounds of Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. The ukulele quickly became
a decidedly uncool instrument, a perception elevated by the comedic performances of Tiny Tim on the wildly popular ’60s TV show Laugh In. Most kids retired their ukes and begged their parents to buy them guitars.
Plastic Fantastic
But ukulele manufacturers weren’t ready to throw in the towel just yet. The plastic uke still had a significant champion in Italian-born musician and luthier Mario Maccaferri, who founded the Mastro Plastics Company in 1945 to initially produce plastic clothespins and wall tiles during the early post-war years. An instrument maker at heart, Maccaferri applied modern injection-molding techniques to the manufacture of Styron plastic ukuleles, producing the first Islander model soprano uke in 1949.
When plastic uke sales slumped in the mid-1960s with the advent of rock ’n’ roll, Mastro’s first response was to cleverly re-brand one of the ukes they were already making: Mastro created its new Twist model by simply adding new graphics depicting twisting dancers to its soprano-size TV Pal ukuleles.
After the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964, Mastro introduced its own line of licensed Beatles instruments at the New York Toy Show the following month. From 1964 to 1967 Mastro produced four different ukulele-sized Beatles models: The four-string ukette-sized Beatles Jr.; the soprano-sized Four Pop; the six-string, soprano-sized Yeah Yeah; and the six-string baritone uke–sized Beatle-ist. All four models came with a pick and a songbook and were branded as guitars, despite the fact that all but the Beatle-ist were created using the same molds used to produce its regular ukettes and soprano ukes.
In 1967, Mastro introduced several new models aimed towards satisfying young rockers. Its 15-inch Monkey Uke had four strings and a body shaped like an electric guitar. And its 22-inch Hugger Ukulele had six strings, an electric guitar–style double-cutaway body, and a top decorated with flowers and a stylish hippie girl. Mastro also produced an electrified baritone model: the steel-stringed Tenor Cutaway (more on that later).
How Many More Ukes
Mastro wasn’t the only company to produce low-cost plastic ukuleles that capitalized on the ’60s rock ’n’ roll craze. The Carnival Toy Manufacturing Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, produced dozens of different child-sized ukettes in the 1950s and ‘60s, each with a different theme: Calypso, Cowboy, Gaucho, and Home on the Range. Its Rock N Roll model, introduced sometime around 1965, featured fun graphics, including slang phrases such as “Play it Cool” and “Crazy Man Crazy.”
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Mattel created a couple of models of plastic four-stringed instruments that capitalized on the popularity of the “Faux Four,” the American pop-rock quartet the Monkees. First produced in 1966, the concert uke–sized Monkees model featured a rather colorful graphic of the four group members—Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones—atop an orange, plastic-bodied uke. Around this same time, Mattel also produced a toy-sized Monkees Music Box Ge-tar, which featured a hand-cranked music box inside that played one of the band’s tunes.
Founded by three brothers in Toronto in the 1920s, Reliable Toy Company grew from a tiny toy producer to become Canada’s largest toymaker, initially producing plush toys, novelties, and dolls. In the early 1940s, Reliable formed a partnership with the Canadian government, using its expertise in injection-molded plastics to produce wartime supplies, including plastic bullet tips and gun accessories. Reliable started manufacturing plastic ukuleles sometime in the late 1940s, its first model being the toy-sized Uke-A-Tune. By the 1960s, the company had a small line of soprano-sized plastic ukes, including the Mod Guitar, which featured graphics of a hip-looking couple playing and dancing in front of a sidewalk café.
One of the most unusual creations designed to meet the demand for rock ’n’ roll–themed instruments was done by the Jefferson Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jefferson produced an extensive line of inexpensive musical toys, including ukuleles and guitars made from, believe it or not, cardboard. Its Rock N Roll concert-sized model was painted blue and yellow, and featured images of kids dancing and singing along to the strains of a boy playing a guitar.
British Invasion
Selcol, established in 1953 in the UK as a subsidiary of French musical instrument company Selmer, manufactured all manner of novelties as well as garden furniture and plastic toys—including ukuleles. Most of the four-string instruments Selcol made in the 1960s were meant to be tuned like ukes, although they were promoted and sold as “junior guitars.” Models included the soprano-sized Beatles Jr. and the Beatles New Sound guitar models, as well as the Skiffle Junior. Manufactured sometime in the 1960s, the concert-sized Beatles New Sound model has a body and neck made of orange plastic, topped with an ivory colored top featuring stenciled graphics of the four band members, complete with their signatures. It was sold attached to a cardboard card with graphics that announced: “It’s Fab.”
Selcol also made two soprano-sized models that featured another famous English band: the Rolling Stones. Both the Cutaway Jr. Guitar and Electra models had shapes based on curvaceous electric guitars. The premium Electra featured a pickup and tone controls—both fake—and graphics of the signatures of all five Rolling Stones band members on the body. It was packaged with a Stones-branded harmonica. In addition to being sold by itself, the Cutaway Jr. was also sold as part of a Rolling Stones Party Pack that included a harmonica and a kazoo.
Selcol’s plastic instrument lines also included a couple of four-stringed, baritone-sized instruments: the Beatles’ New Beat 4 Guitar and the Elvis Presley Guitar, both of which were tuned the same as a baritone ukulele. The New Beat 4 had an orange body with a dark brown tailpiece, fingerboard, and pickguard. The top of the body featured “New Beat” in chrome plastic letters and the Beatles’ signatures and a paper sticker photo of the Fab Four. The Elvis Presley model had a swirly brown plastic body with a red top and ivory colored pickguard, fingerboard, and headstock. It featured a shiny chrome plastic tailpiece, bridge, and fancy soundhole rosette, and Elvis’ signature. The headstock sported a paper photo sticker of the King himself. The instrument came with a plastic “auto chord” device that allowed the user to play six different chords with just the push of a button.
Uke Goes Electric
Perhaps the ultimate attempt to get young people interested in playing four-string “guitar style” instruments was to fit them with pickups and sell them complete with their own amplifiers. Mastro’s GTA-5 Tenor Cutaway Electric Guitar was a variation of its Islander (#410) and TV Pal (#610) model plastic baritone ukes. Molded from “rosewood swirl” Styron plastic with ivory colored plastic accents, the GTA-5 was equipped with steel strings and an electric guitar–style pickup with its own volume control (the steel strings are necessary to work with the magnetic pickup). Because of the tension of the steel strings, this bari’s neck was reinforced with a rigid metal beam that ran the length of the instrument. The GTA-5 was packaged with Mastro’s TA-5 battery powered amplifier, which ran on a pair of now-antiquated 9-volt dry cells. The five-watt amplifier’s cabinet was wrapped in shiny gold vinyl, with sparkly black and gold fabric covering its six-inch speaker.
The coolest of all the four-stringed electric instruments in this period has to be the non-plastic Tombo Ukelet. Established in 1917, the Tombo Musical Instrument Company pioneered new electronic technologies in the early 1960s and implemented them in the electric instruments they made. Tombo, which means “dragonfly” in Japanese, only produced the Ukelet for a couple of years in the mid-1960s. This tenor-sized, solid wood–bodied electric ukulele had a shape similar to a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. It had four steel strings, a magnetic pickup, and volume and tone controls. The Ukelet was available with a white, red, or red-to-black sunburst finish. The instrument’s rectangular hard case contained a hidden surprise: The hinged panel on the back opened to reveal a built-in four-watt solid-state amplifier which ran on either six D-size batteries or standard 120-volt AC household electricity.
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Skiffle—The British Stepping Stone to Rock ’n’ Roll
Before there was rock ’n’ roll, there was a style of music that was a blend of many different influences: skiffle. This genre came from African American musical culture in the early 20th century, with influences from American folk music, blues, country, bluegrass, and jazz. Jug bands played skiffle music on improvised instruments like washboards, jugs, washtub basses, musical saws, and comb-and-paper kazoos, as well as more conventional instruments like acoustic guitars and banjos.
After skiffle music lost popularity in the U.S., it experienced a surprising revival in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. British skiffle grew out of the post-WWII jazz scene, which embraced a variety of American folk and blues songs that emulated American jug bands. The first British skiffle recordings were by Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen in 1954, but it was Lonnie Donegan’s Skiffle Group that really made this music popular. Donegan’s fast-tempo version of Lead Belly’s “Rock Island Line” was a major hit in 1956. By the late ’50s, there were an estimated 30,000–50,000 skiffle groups in Britain.
Skiffle is now regarded as a critical stepping stone to the British Invasion of rock ’n’ roll music that impacted the American pop music scene in the 1960s. A large number of British musicians began their careers playing skiffle, including Van Morrison, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Roger Daltrey (the Who), and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), as well as Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of the Hollies. Most notably, the Beatles evolved from John Lennon’s 1957 skiffle group, the Quarrymen. Similarly, the Bee Gees grew out of Barry Gibb’s skiffle group, the Rattlesnakes.
To cash in on the UK skiffle craze, British musical instrument manufacturer Selcol produced a concert-sized four string ukulele called the Skiffle Junior. The graphics on the instrument’s upper bout feature a pair of women gazing adoringly at a young man playing a Skiffle Junior uke.
