Jim Beloff’s ‘mid-century modern’ Explores Hope, Loss, and Joy with a Healthy Dose of Tasteful Jazz

BY NICOLAS GRIZZLE | FROM THE SPRING 2026 ISSUE OF UKULELE

Jim Beloff trained in writing songs for musical theater, interning with Leonard Bernstein and getting tips from Steven Sondheim. So, naturally, he has made a career of writing and arranging cool jazz tunes for ukulele.

mid-century modern, released in November with an album release party at the Great Minnesota Ukulele Gathering, is perhaps Beloff’s jazziest yet. It’s certainly got the most production, with backing vocals, horns, strings, drums, bass, and other instruments filling out the album’s lush sound. The orchestration often leans into a bygone era, but the songs at their core feel timeless and current. It would feel right at home in a swinging 1960s lounge, but also at an intimate 2026 dinner party—and certainly at an ukulele festival or club meeting.

His previous albums—Jim’s Dog Has Fleas (1994), For the Love of Uke (1998), Dreams I Left in Pockets (2014), and The Wind and Sun (2020), as well as a handful of EPs—also prominently feature ukulele. But something that’s different on this album is that a wistful thread weaves through the songs, pulled by a needle of hope. Six years ago Beloff’s wife and musical partner, Liz, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and he now visits her often in a care facility near his home. Though they are widely known in the uke world, it wasn’t until recently that Beloff began talking about it publicly, previously explaining her absence vaguely as “health issues.”

On mid-century modern Beloff speaks what cannot be said about this transition from his point of view, choosing not to ignore the sadness but not to wallow in it, either. But there’s plenty of joy on this album, too. For example, “A Ukulele and You” is a peppy number inspired by an interview Bette Midler gave after taking lessons from Beloff, in which she mused about doing a one-woman-show with ukulele as the only accompaniment to her powerful voice. And “Avuncular” is a quirky earworm that was written in part because Beloff just liked the word itself.

Beloff also talks about playing the Gibson tenor used to record Lyle Ritz’s landmark 1950s jazz album, How About Uke?, his pantheon of great songwriters (not-so-spoiler alert: it includes Burt Bacharach), and what makes a song “jazzy” to his ear.

How does this album differ from your previous ones?

The first and obvious answer is that it’s just more produced. There isn’t much I wish I had added to any of these tracks. We got the background vocals, we got the strings, we got keys and horns. There is nothing that I feel is missing, production-wise. And every album prior to this was accommodating certain limitations, budget- or talent-wise.

How did the orchestration come into play in the songwriting and recording process? Did you have it in mind from the get-go? Or did that come after the songs were written and you’d started the recording process?

All these songs were written on the uke, so they started small. And because of that they can go anywhere.

One of the key limitations of the uke is that there is often no root, right? One of the interesting things that happens, at least in my case with some of the chords that I like, is that it’s a little unclear what the bass is. Over my last two albums, and then even previously, I’d worked with a really wonderful acoustic bass player in L.A. when I lived out there. So one of the big challenges is just to lay down a bass part and agree that these are the roots of a lot of these more alternative chords.

It started with “Sing Love.” After I wrote that I had a feeling that it sounded like a (Burt) Bacharach song. And so when I was thinking about the production of it, I was thinking of late ’60s classic Bacharach. 

As I started to look at the rest of the tunes as they came together, I thought all of these songs in some way or another remind me of something from that era of music that I grew up in. And so it began this idea of using those albums from the late ’50s to the late ’60s as a North Star. Those records feature lush strings, they feature background vocals. It was a kind of pop sound that I’m very fond of still. That’s how we worked our way toward that idea.

You played Lyle Ritz’s actual 1950’s Gibson tenor cutaway uke on “’50s Modern.” I know you had worked with him often throughout your career, but why did you choose to record with this instrument for that song?

I still remember the feeling of putting Lyle Ritz’s How About Uke? (Verve, 1958) onthe turntable and putting the tone arm down and hearing “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” first song on side A. That changed everything, because it was without a doubt the coolest thing I’d ever heard. At the time we were navigating a world where the uke was more or less thought of as a backyard luau kind of instrument. It was still close enough to the Tiny Tim era that to associate this instrument with something cool was unusual. And yet, this album by Lyle was just absolutely the coolest thing.

He was playing a Gibson tenor with a cutaway, especially made for him. I realized that there was so much more to this instrument than I thought. That was really the catalyst for me to start thinking maybe there is a world in this instrument that needs to be reintroduced, and this instrument is worthy of being reconsidered, reframed in some way. So that became my mission. And I give that credit to Lyle.

That instrument really does have a distinct sound. How about the other ukes that you played on this album?

I played a Magic Fluke ukulele on anything that required higher tuning, like “La La La, I Can’t Hear You,” and “A Ukulele and You,” and I think a couple others. Other than that, mostly it’s a 1950s Martin baritone uke that I’ve just fallen in love with.

How was your album release concert in November?

It was better than I could have hoped. The organizers (at the Great Minnesota Ukulele Gathering) run a really top-notch fest. It was a great turnout and the venue is very good. On Saturday night, I did an hour-long set. And that was my chance to sort of perform about five songs from the new album. And I was really pleased with the reception.

What stood out to you about the reception from the audience?

Well, I’m going to share something that I shared with them. It was a bit of a hump to get over for me, personally. I shared something very private that I had not shared with many people in the ukulele community for the last six years. For most of the time that I’ve been in the uke world, I’ve been accompanied by my wife, Liz, and we made albums together, and all the Daily Ukulele books were arranged and compiled by both of us. We’ve really been joined at the hip from the beginning. And then in 2019, I began to notice some unusual things about her behavior. And to make a long story short, in January of 2020, Liz was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. And this was just before Covid, so I became her caregiver. I did the best I could for three years and then reached the point where I knew I couldn’t give her the care that she needed alone. And so I made the difficult decision and found a wonderful memory care facility very close by, and that’s where she is and that’s where I see her all the time.

There’s a song on the new album called “Since I Found You.” About a month after I brought Liz to this memory care facility, some mutual friends of ours, a couple, came to see us. The husband is a fine songwriter himself and we’ve both admired each other’s work. But this time he shows up and he says, “I’ve got a song and I want you to write the lyrics.” And he said the only proviso is that the last line needs to be “since I found you.”

It was one of those songs that came quite quickly. And I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it. But when I was planning this album, I worked up an arrangement of it and found a key that worked for my voice. I had a nice reaction from a few people just playing in my home and I thought, well, maybe I could consider performing this for others. And then I thought, it’s been six years, maybe I’m ready to talk about this. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to broach the subject onstage at this uke fest, but I found the words. And I think people were really appreciative of my being vulnerable in that moment.

Something that stuck out to me about this album, even before hearing this story, is that some of these songs are so sweet. Do you think this experience might have been within some of these songs?

Yeah. A song like “Sing Love,” which is the opening number, is really my attempt to sort of say, “thank goodness I had as many years as I had with her. I’m grateful for all the time I had with Lizzie,” rather than looking at it through the other end of the telescope and saying, “I’ve lost her.” So, you’ll find the word grateful show up in a few different songs. At some point I realized that it was not a good long-term strategy to just drown in my sorrows. So I tried to reframe the situation.

You’ll also find a certain amount of spirituality in songs like “Have a Little Faith.” That “Boats and Helicopters” song is an interesting one. It was based on a joke about a man who is convinced that God’s going to save him from the flood. A rescue boat comes by to pick him up, and he says, no, God’s going to save me, thank you anyway. A helicopter drops a line, and they say, grab it, this is your last chance. He says, no, thanks, I know God will save me. And of course he drowns. He gets up to God and says, where were you? I thought you were gonna save me? And God says, what do you mean? I sent you a boat and a helicopter!

I love that joke because I think it is so powerful; it has such an important message besides being funny. I try to live my life that way, which is to sort of lean forward. My favorite line is “awaiting further instructions.” And I sort of believe that we are all being given instructions all the time, and it’s either our choice to hear them or not. And eventually, I guess, you get hit by a two-by-four and then you get the message. 

I finished the album and my sister was the one who said, “This is such a hopeful album.” And I had not anticipated that. And she thought that it was timely, given the circumstances of the world at the moment. So if that all kind of coalesced in some larger meaning, that’s wonderful.

When you wrote these songs, were you setting out with a certain genre in mind? For example, do you start out with saying, “this is going to be a jazz tune,” or does it just kind of take shape later in the process?

I don’t think I’m that intentional about it. For example, “Avuncular” became a really sort of fun jazz tune, but as I was writing it I just loved the word avuncular, which means to be an uncle—which I am. (Jazz pianist) Dave Frishberg wrote all of these kind of fun jazzy songs like “Peel Me a Grape” and “My Attorney Bernie,” very literate with a fair amount of wordplay and things like that. Avuncular just struck me as a funny word that I could have some fun with. 

I guess I’m going in through the lyrics and saying to myself, what kind of musical setting is this lyric idea asking for? So it’s not really so much me imposing a sound as sort of trying to determine what the concept, what the lyric, what the idea of the song seems to be requiring. 

Once I finished “Sing Love,” even though it’s just me on a baritone uke when I’m writing it, I thought to myself, this has a feeling of a Bacharach tune. And just the fact that I could play in that sandbox is actually a big deal. I mean, it’s easy to say “Write a song like Burt Bacharach,” but that’s impossible. I mean, try to do it!

Did you start out your musical career playing jazz?

No. Some people, when they listen to my music, they’ll say, it sounds like show music. And that’s actually pretty perceptive in a certain way, because that was my major in college. And I even interned for Leonard Bernstein on a musical that he wrote with Alan J. Lerner when I was in college. And when I got to New York, I met Stephen Sondheim and spent an afternoon talking lyrics with him. So I had great interest in writing musicals. 

I have deep roots in what you might call the technical aspects of writing theater music, but also a deep appreciation for the songcraft of the Great American Songbook. It’s really clean writing, tight rhyming, scansion, rhythm—I was really heavily trained in that, both on my own and actually taking workshops by ASCAP and BMI, learning the craft of writing very clearly. So that is sort of built into to my music.

On the other hand, I also love pop music. I have my pantheon, like everyone else. It includes James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, all great, great artists from my era. But two others that I would include in there are people like Jimmy Webb, who wrote “Wichita Lineman,” and Todd Rundgren is way at the top.

Rundgren especially has done a little of everything.

That’s right. I’ve followed him everywhere, so I know his career really well. But what is common throughout all of my pantheon of writers is that they all have their own unique palette of chords—especially Todd. I mean, it’s like you can literally talk about the chords that Todd uses that are so unique to him. And it’s certainly true of Joni Mitchell, certainly true of Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Webb, James Taylor.

I’ve always really loved chord changes. And that’s why the (Daily Ukulele) songbook thing became so fun for me, because I could approximate these rich chords with only four strings. And that actually became more challenging and interesting to me than doing it around six (strings). It was the fact that you had two fewer strings and you’re still creating 13ths and sixths and ninths and getting the essential richness of those chords that really kind of fascinated me.

The chordal complexity on mid-century modern feels effortless and natural. Is that something that you were consciously trying to achieve?

As I’m writing a song, I want to surprise myself. Even as a kid, I used to get goosebumps if I heard an unusual  chord change. If it’s a sort of a run-of-the-mill change, then I’m thinking, “What might be more interesting?” But it can’t just be interesting for the sake of being interesting, because that won’t necessarily be as graceful or natural sounding.

What makes something jazzy, in your opinion? Is it chords? Rhythm? Melody? Lyrics? What brings that kind of flavor for you?

When I was playing guitar before the uke entered my life, I loved Kenny Rankin, a wonderful acoustic jazz guitar player. And there are all these beautiful sort of substitution chords, it’s just gorgeous. Chords, chords, chords—that’s what it is to me. Stevie Wonder, Joni, James, all of them, it’s about the music. If the music wasn’t happening for me, then I don’t know that I would have gotten to the lyrics. So that’s why (Bob) Dylan, as brilliant as he is, and as much as I can appreciate him, I don’t play him a lot. Even though he writes good tunes, I just don’t find enough of the music to mean enough to me, to move me enough.

What is something you can suggest to make playing jazz a little more approachable for a beginner, someone who’s maybe intimidated by the idea of jazz?

When I do workshops, I always include something from our book Jazzing Up the Ukulele. Fred Sokolow did it for us. For those who are just starting out, you’re really locked into three or four chords and playing these great old songs. But in some cases, you’re sitting on a C chord for what seems like eternity, right? And at some point, you’re going to kind of get bored and think, is there anything else I could do while I’m just sitting on this C chord? I asked Fred to show us what could be done with “Red River Valley” by throwing in all of these substitution chords and interesting variants. 

I think this is a wonderful way to get someone to widen their perspective, to make that next step from very simple chords to thinking outside of the box and slowly adding in more interesting chords that most people would probably interpret as “a bit jazzy.” And then also to be able to look and see why that chord is OK to play there from a music theory point of view.

So you’re saying there really is no perfect one-and-done trick—it’s just taking it one step, one chord at a time.

And I do that somewhat delicately because I also appreciate the fact that “Red River Valley” with three chords is perfect the way it is. There is something so heartbreakingly perfect about it as a three chord song, and I don’t want anyone to think these songs are just boring without dressing them up. Sometimes it is that simplicity, that naked simplicity that makes them so powerful. So, it’s all about finessing it; it’s all about nuance.

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The Ritz Effect

Lyle Ritz’s 1958 Verve album How About Uke? is widely hailed as a seminal recording in the uke world, and Jim Beloff is at least partly responsible for this. The album entered his life during a trip to Hawaii in the early 1990s and he mentioned it in one of his first books, Ukulele Tips and Tunes (1994). He continued to champion it thereafter and eventually became friends with Ritz.

“It’s well known that album was a colossal failure (at the time of its release),” says Beloff. “And the follow-up, too. He had a three-record deal and they both mutually agreed, Lyle and Verve, not to do a third album because neither of the albums had done anything. I remember talking to Lyle about what Verve did to promote it and they did virtually nothing. I think he got one review and that was in the New Yorker magazine. Nobody at Verve thought, for example, to send him to Hawaii.”

The ukulele world’s loss became the bass world’s gain, as he went on to become famous for playing bass on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and many great pop records of the late ’60s and ’70s as part of the Wrecking Crew. 

“The other funny thing is that, unbeknownst to Lyle, the album (eventually) landed in Hawaii and immediately the entire uke world of Hawaii became obsessed with it and they all start learning it,” says Beloff. “In the meantime, Lyle has no idea that this is going on—it’s pre-internet, and I guess nobody really tried very hard to reach him. So for years, he thinks nothing ever happened with that album. And then it’s only much later that he realizes that copies did get to Hawaii, and it had a huge influence on players like Benny Chong, who completely absorbed those albums and it sort of changed his playing style. But Lyle doesn’t learn that until much, much later.”

At the end of his Wrecking Crew days, Ritz and his wife decided to move to Hawaii with their young daughter. “You’d think that he’d get a lot of gigs playing the uke there, but actually, mostly he gets gigs playing bass,” says Beloff. “But it’s at that time, in probably the mid-’90s, that I first met him. I’d learned to play some of the songs on How About Uke?, and I was just enraptured by him. That was the beginning of a long, long relationship.

“When I would go to his house, of course I would want to see the Gibson cutaway. And I sometimes would ask him what his plans were for it. He didn’t play it much, it was just sort of salted away. He had a much more current, well-made, beautiful custom uke that he liked to play, and he had no idea what he was going to do with it. And then, to make a long story short, one day, a package arrives and he had sent it to me.”

And that’s how, nine years after Ritz’s death in 2017, his sonic signature still carries on in a new recording. “Since I’ve had it, I’ve always wanted to use it somehow. I remember going on tour with him after I’d written ‘50s Modern’ just as an instrumental,” says Beloff. “I remember playing it for him and he started to jam on it on his uke, so I salted that away. It was an instrumental for a long time until finally it became this concept I wanted to write about. And I thought, you know, this uke was played on a ’50s album and I associate it with Lyle anyway, so this was the song to play it on.” —NG

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Bette On It

Jim Beloff’s inspiration can strike at any moment, but it’s often tied to his own experience in the ukulele universe. In 2007, Bette Middler invited Beloff to back her on ukulele on the hapa-haole classic “Princess Poo-Poo-Ly Has Plenty Pa-Pa-Ya” at a memorial concert for Ahmet Ertegun, the cofounder of Atlantic Records, at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater in New York City. His song “A Ukulele and You” was inspired by Midler, but not necessarily by her prowess as an entertainer.

“I was giving Bette Midler uke lessons,” says Beloff, “And then I read in an interview she gave in Australia where somebody asked her, ‘What are you thinking about in terms of your retirement?’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m getting ukulele lessons at the moment. And who knows, maybe at that point, I’ll just go out and it’ll just be a uke and me.’ And I thought there was something there. And so I wrote that song, really, for her. But it’s becoming a great closing number. So I’ve been opening lately with ‘Sing Love,’ which starts with, ‘What a joy to sing for you,’ which is a great way to open the show to the audience, and then closing with ’Give me a ukulele and you.’”—NG

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