Ukuleles: Everyone's playing them. Ads from the great uke craze of the 1910s-20s.

1917 ad.


1917 ad.

Here's a larger size.

University of Hawaii at Manoa has a whole Flickr set of vintage ukulele advertisements from the first decade of the 20th century:

Ukulele was all the rage on the mainland United States in the late 1910s and early 1920s. George E. K. Awai and his Royal Hawaiian Quartet popularized the small, guitar-like instrument when they performed at the Panama Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco in 1915.

During the ukulele craze, ukulele advertisements appeared in U.S. mainland newspapers.

1915 ad.


1915 ad.