An oral history of “The King of Waikiki.”Don: We would spend hours talking story about music. Because when Kui [Lee] and I sat down and we talked about music it was, ‘Hey, we got to write our own music because ‘Sweet Leilani’ and ‘Blue Hawai‘i’ and all that stuff, forget it. That’s from Chicago or someplace, some writer over there. We’re local boys; we want to write our own music, portray our own attitudes and everything. Our lifestyle. We want to show everybody else in the world that we can be just as good as them in putting out music about Hawai‘i or music, period, or entertain, period.
On the day of Don Ho’s funeral, May 5, 2007, an estimated 10,000 mourners lined Kalakaua Avenue and Queen’s Surf Beach in Waikiki. More than 70 surfboards and canoes paddled out into the water. The KHNL/Channel 8 news helicopter dropped a load of orchids. An Air Force F-15 jet did a fly-by, tipping one wing. Clifford Nae‘ole chanted a powerful tribute he had composed in Hawaiian. And statewide, fans of the legendary entertainer mourned.
What was it about this star that brought about Hawai‘i’s biggest funeral since those of Duke Kahanamoku and songwriter Kui Lee?
The answers may be found in this weighty coffee table book by Ho and veteran music writer Jerry Hopkins. Don Ho: My Music, My Life is packed with glossy photographs, quotes and stories from Ho’s family, friends, associates and “Mr. Hawai‘i” himself. Many of the interviews were completed during what turned out to be the last month of Ho’s life.
The format, rather than the classic autobiography or biography approach, is more of what Hopkins and Ho called “a modern Hawaiian quilt”—an oral history and collection of memories woven together chronologically. A section called “Voices” at the beginning of the book identifies all the speakers.
The result is a chatty, informal read that gives you a good sense of the real Don Ho and how he became what he became. Especially insightful are the first few chapters about his early years, from his experiences growing up in a poor neighborhood in Kaka‘ako; to playing football at Kamehameha; to college in Springfield, Mass. (“he wrote his mother and said, ‘This little pineapple is freezing and I want to come home,’” said his college roommate Tom Bosworth); to his years in the Air Force, which Ho called “one of the most incredible times in my life.”
Ho began his foray into show business working at his parent’s bar, Honey’s, in 1959. “My dad says, ‘Why don’t you play music, son?’ I said, ‘Yeah, right, dad.’” But that was the start of his lifelong passion for entertaining.
The book traces the rise of Ho’s fame from Honey’s to Waikiki, to Vegas and beyond. Along the way, we learn the background of the Tiny Bubbles phenomenon (“I didn’t like the song, but I sang it one time, and I walked out of the studio. A week later it was all over the country.”); the “kissing grandmas” tradition (“It started with the cheek. Pretty soon they were kissing me full-on. I mean, full-on!”); and plenty of other scoop about the Hawaiian music scene at the time.
Don Ho: My Music, My Life doesn’t have a lot in the way of factual, objective information—save for a timeline in the front—but what it does have is plenty fun to read. And one thing this book establishes once and for all—there’s much more to Don Ho than Tiny Bubbles.
4 out of 5 Shakas
Don Ho: My Music, My Life
By Don Ho and Jerry Hopkins
Watermark Publishing, 2007
hardcover, $29.95
ISBN: 978-0-9790647-4-6
www.bookshawaii.net