Born Earl Daniel Scanlan, Jr. 

Dan Scanlan arrived in Los Angeles during WWII, the first of five boys and four girls. He was in the first graduating class of both his grammar and high schools. In 1961 he attended Loyola University of Los Angeles (now Loyola-Marymount University) and graduated four years later with a BA in English and Communication Arts. On his first day of college, he was standing in an alphabetically arranged line to sign for his English classes. Pat Sauer was in front of him. They started a conversation they have yet to finish. For 60 years they wrote 

songs together and performed as the duo Flathead, Pat on Dobro guitar, Dan on uke and guitar.

In his second year of teaching high school he was asked to resign for speaking out against the draft, the war in Vietnam and the racist techniques of local Realtors. He became a police and fire reporter for a daily newspaper and was the first to report that major drug companies were purposely over-producing downers (reds, yellows and rainbows, i.e., Seconal, Nembutal and Tuinal) and dumping them in Mexico for a tax write-off. They were then sold over the counter, snuck across the border and sold to high school kids. The scam was outlawed.

Scanlan began playing the ukulele and guitar in earnest in his senior year in high school (1960). ln the 1970s he teamed up with his college roommate as the duo Flathead and performed in the Sacramento area and on the road. When he ran humorously for governor of California in 1974 he earned the nickname “Gov”, a tag his friends from that era still use when referring to him.

During the Reagan Administration, Scanlan hosted Tuesday Live, a weekly live radio program in which anyone who said they could play got to play. The program featured his short comedy newscast, “The News With Dan Ratherthan”.

In the late ‘80s, Scanlan included a short history of the ukulele in a press release for a gig. He received a phone call from the great-grandson of the inventor of the ukulele. He learned that the grand-daughter of Manuel Nunes, the inventor of the ukulele, was going to turn 104 on the day of his own birthday. He visited her on their joint birthday and he learned a bit more about the ukulele’s history. Ten years later, as the American co-ordinator of “A Father and Son Reunion: The Braguinha Meets the Ukulele” he returned the ukulele with two other ukulele players to the Island of Madeira, Portugal. There he taught Madeiran musicians to play the ukulele and he learned the braguinha.  The group of Americans and Madeirans performed two shows in Madeira and did a final performance at the Lisbon, Portugal World Expo.

‍ Scanlan served for several years as the emcee, workshop presenter and performer at the International Ukulele Ceilidh in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada. He did five cross-country workshop tours in an old Toyota motorhome.  He co-hosted the popular Sunday night show, End of the Trail Saloon, on KVMR Community Radio in Nevada City for five years, and was a member of  the Self-Righteous Brothers, Jukolin, Top Quark, and The Enablers, music combos in Nevada City and Grass Valley.

His on-line ukulele course at Udemy.com has nearly 4,000 students in 80 countries. The course spurred Simon and Schuster to ask him to write a beginner’s method book on the ukulele, which has been highly reviewed. Since the publisher wanted half of the songs in the book to be originals, Scanlan committed his own songs to sheet music. When the book was finished he continued scoring his songs and has since released two song books: “The World As I Sing It” in 2019 (114 songs)  and its expansion, “The World As I Uke It” in 2021, with 131 songs  with ukulele chord diagrams and notes of each song’s provenance. (They are available from this website.)

He currently leads the ukulele group, The Strum Bums in Grass Valley CA.  They can be seen in the documentary movie, “The Mighty Uke” and featured in a cameo on the Mighty Uke DVD. They have performed at numerous county fairs, convalescent and retirement homes, schools, special events. They performed at two International Ukulele festivals in Hawaii and were awarded a standing ovation at the New York Ukulele Festival. The group, like so many others worldwide, is currently on a hiatus due to the Covid pandemic—their 5o to 60 gigs a year at convalescent, assisted living, and retirement home, schools, fairs and benefits has come to denouement.

—March 2021