He’d also play it upside down with the same alarming speed and precision. Smeck preferred to dance for his fans while he frantically tapped on his uke.

While still in his early 20s, Smeck would become one of vaudeville’s most successful stars without uttering a single word during his energetic performances. Starting at a young age, the future virtuoso would teach himself to play the guitar, steel guitar, banjo, octo-chorda (or “octachorda,” an eight-string steel guitar), jaw harp, harmonica, and his weapon of choice, the ukulele.

Roy Smeck was born in 1900 in Pennsylvania. Smeck, whose first 78 rpm recording came out in 1928, shall we? In a 2012 interview with Ultimate Guitar, Hackett credited himself as being the “inventor of tapping on record,” which isn’t really true as guitarist Jimmie Webster was known for his tapping (or the sexy-sounding “touching”) technique, which you can hear on at least one recording, Webster’s Unabridged, from 1959.īut let’s get back to the talented Mr. Though he has given the nod to another musician known for his finger-tapping innovations, Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. To my knowledge, Eddie has never credited Smeck as a source of inspiration for his style. He was also born twenty years after Smeck in 1920. Getting back to the popular notion Smeck was EVH’s dad…after the devastating loss of Eddie earlier this month, keyboard warriors started sharing videos of Smeck tapping away on his uke with lightning speed, with the caption “ this is Eddie Van Halen’s father.” I suppose it was an easy mistake to make, given the skill level Smeck possessed, and its eerie similarity to one of Eddie’s calling cards, his blink-and-you-missed-it guitar tapping wizardry.Įd’s real father, Jan Van Halen, was, of course, a great musician in his own right and mentor to both Eddie and Alex Van Halen. Roosevelt’s inauguration celebration in 1933. Smeck’s popularity was such that he was invited to play at President Franklin D. The technique has been traced back to the late 1700s, but as far as the popularization of two-hand-tapping, that honor belongs to Roy Smeck – a visionary ukulele player who rose to fame as one of vaudeville’s premier attractions. One of the many rumors passed around the Internet (imagine that!) concerns musician and ukulele player Roy Smeck, known as “The Wizard of the Strings.” It turns out that a lot of people seemed convinced that Smeck was actually Eddie Van Halen’s father and an innovator of “two-hand-tapping,” a method of playing a stringed instrument by tapping the strings with an object or your fingers. The great Roy Smeck surrounded by his instruments.

Roy smeck ukelele