May Singhi Breen Ukuleles & Case, ca. 1930
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APPRAISER:
Well, this is a couple of firsts when you walked up with this case, because I'd never seen a double ukulele case before.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
But when I opened it, what caught my eye was the, was the photo on the lid.
GUEST:
That is my great-grandmother, May Singhi Breen, and her husband, Peter De Rose. So they were passed down through our family. And I, I got these about ten years ago.
APPRAISER:
And so can you tell us anything about the man in the picture?
GUEST:
Sure, so that is Peter De Rose. He was a very well-known composer at the time. He was also, along with May, in Paul Whiteman's orchestra, and they were known as "The Sweethearts of the Air" on CBS Radio in New York for 25 years.
APPRAISER:
Right.
GUEST:
And he wrote "Deep Purple" and "Wagon Wheels" and "Have You Ever Been Lonely?", and quite a few fairly well-known songs for their day.
APPRAISER:
Yeah, a few. Yeah, so, he played piano and she played ukulele. May Singhi Breen is a superstar in the ukulele world. She was the first woman inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame. She was also instrumental in getting the ukulele accepted by the American Federation of Musicians union as a real musical instrument. Before that, the ukulele was just a novelty. So if you were a ukulele player, you had... You basically had no cred at all among musicians. So you were just, like, "Oh, yeah, that thing."
GUEST:
Gotcha.
APPRAISER:
And she did arrangements for hundreds and hundreds of songs for the ukulele. She was instrumental in using the ukulele for teaching kids in schools. So she was a really big deal. And she loved Martin ukuleles, and they made her a number of custom ukuleles. And this is, is one of the... of the highest model, the 5K-- the K stood for koa. So it's figured koa.
GEUST: Okay.
APPRAISER:
What makes this one so special is the name "Ukulele Lady," and she was billed as the Original Ukulele Lady, and then her name on the headstock. It's a pretty special uke in, in several ways. There's a similar one in the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And this is a, a more typical model. It's a 3M-- that would be one model down. There wasn't a, there wasn't a four. The fancier ukulele is, is from the mid-1930s.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
1934, '35. This one's quite a bit earlier. It has a number of features which peg it to probably 1926, '27. They're both the soprano style, which is the original ukulele. A 5K Hawaiian ukulele, without any association with May Singhi Breen, is currently in the $7,500 kind of price range.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And a 3M, this is earlier and pretty nice, so that's probably in the $1,500 range.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
But when you put the two together, and then the double case, and the whole association with her, and the photos, takes it up to a much higher level. In a vintage shop, we're probably looking at a, at a retail value of about $15,000.
GUEST:
Okay, great.
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