When is a uke not a uke? Some people would say the baritone isn’t a ukulele because it’s not tuned like one. The bari is tuned DGBE, the same as the four highest strings of the guitar. Be that as it may, it’s always been called a ukulele, so that’s good enough for our purposes.

There are two claimants to the creation of the baritone. Favilla and Vega, two instrument-making companies based in New York, both claim to have made the first bari around 1950. Who’s right? It’s likely a case of the same idea occurring to two different people at the same time.

However, we do know who popularized it. Arthur Godfrey was a hugely popular radio and tv personality in the late 40’s and early 50’s; at the height of his fame you could catch him on either radio or tv up to six nights a week. Godfrey loved the uke and used it frequently on his shows. He promoted one of the first plastic ukes (the Islander, developed by master luthier Mario Maccaferri), and is often given credit for the second wave of ukulele popularity. Godfrey wanted an instrument that more closely matched his vocal range, and found the baritone fitted the bill nicely.

The bari’s tuning has the same relationships between the strings as the standard uke’s does, so the chord shapes will look familiar to a uke player, and your hand will find the shapes easily. The problem lies in the fact that they all have different names; what a uke player would recognize as a C chord sounds G on the baritone, F sounds C, and so on. But once you get used to it, the inclusion of a baritone in a uke group makes a nice addition to the sonic range.

There are two instruments that are about the same size as the baritone uke: the tenor guitar and the Venezuelan cuatro. The tenor guitar was originally tuned CGDA like the tenor banjo, but now is often tuned the same as the baritone uke, increasing the confusion between the two. You can tell them apart by the narrow neck and steel strings on the tenor guitar. And the cuatro is tuned differently: ADF#B like the Nova Scotia tuning of the uke, but the first and fourth strings are tuned an octave lower l, so the fourth string is the lowest pitch and the first string is next lowest (unlike the uke where the third string is lowest).

Here’s a clip from the movie The Glass Bottom Boat, in which Arthur Godfrey and his baritone ukulele team up with Doris Day to sing the title song. When the camera isn’t on Doris, watch Arthur’s left had. He really was an accomplished player.