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Topic: Territorial Airways-am940-Honolulu |
Martin Curnan
From:
Lihue, Kauai
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Posted 30 Jun 2012 12:58 pm |
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Every friday for the past 33 years Harry B.Soria Jr has hosted his radio show from 12:00-1:00pm. with nostalgic Hawaiian music from the past and interviews from icons of the Hawaiian music. Yesterday his showed featured the music of the late Linda Dela Cruz aka "Hawaii's Canary". I heard some 'chicken skin' steel I believe is Benny Rogers in these tracks.You can check out the rebroadcast at www.territorialairways.com
#2 Moku Kia Kahi
#4 Ku'u Milimili Hula
#7 Alekoki
#9 Miloli'i
Derick Mau or Ron Whitfield could you please give a response if it is Benny Rogers. |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 30 Jun 2012 2:15 pm
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| While I'm enjoying the archives, swap my name for Bill Wynne's and along with Derrick you'll get your answers that I can mostly only guess at. |
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Wally Pfeifer
From:
Illinois, USA
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Posted 1 Jul 2012 9:32 am
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 Martin,
I suppose that you are aware of Harry Bs website
where you can listen to his programs of several weeks
anytime you want.
His website is
www.territorialairwaves.com Seems to be a lot better than going to AM940 or Hawaiian105.
Wally |
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Derrick Mau
From:
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 1 Jul 2012 9:55 am
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Martin,
After brief listening, I suspecting it's Lovely Lui.
It's definately not Benny Rogers on steel.
Sorry for the late response. Been busy. |
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Don Kona Woods
From:
Hawaiian Kama'aina
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Posted 1 Jul 2012 3:33 pm
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Harold Hakuole was the principal steel guitar player for Linda DelaCruz.
He was her longtime musical director for recording sessions and played the steel guitar on her releases.
Benny Rogers was more identified with Genoa Keawe.
Benny would not have crossed over to play steel for Linda because of an unspoken loyalty to Genoa.
Loyalty was a very important Hawaiian tradition among vocalists and musicians.
Hope this helps!
Aloha, 
Don |
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Philip Tamarkin
From:
California, USA
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Posted 2 Jul 2012 4:58 am
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| What a great site! Thanks for the link - we OD'd on Hawaiian music last night! |
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Dave Mayes
From:
Oakland, Ca.
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Posted 2 Jul 2012 8:11 am
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| I'm with you Martin, I think it's Benny Rogers too. Maybe Bill Wynne will chime in. Bill has a great batting average with this sort of thing. |
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Bill Wynne
From:
New Jersey, USA
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Posted 2 Jul 2012 9:14 am
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| Dave Mayes wrote: |
| I'm with you Martin, I think it's Benny Rogers too. Maybe Bill Wynne will chime in. Bill has a great batting average with this sort of thing. |
I was actually waiting until I get home from work so that I could a) hear the recordings and b) look at my notes scribbled on the recordings.
But if memory serves me correctly, none other than Benny Kalama arranged these sessions, and Tommy Castro was playing steel. But that is strictly from memory and without hearing these cuts again (which I haven't spun for some time). |
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Bill Wynne
From:
New Jersey, USA
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Posted 2 Jul 2012 12:55 pm
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The steeler is the much underrated (and under-recorded) Eddie Pang who served as a sort of house steeler for the Tradewinds Records label. He also recorded with Bill Ali'iloa Lincoln on the same label during this period.
He also did a beautiful steel duets album with Barney Isaacs entitled "Evening In The Islands." That one is still available on CD under the group name The Maile Serenaders on the Hula Records label.
As for Don's guess about Harold Hakuole... I struck up a friendship with Harold very late in his life. (I was even quoted in his Honolulu Star-Bulletin obituary.) He did arrange for Linda's recordings but only ever played steel on two cuts on her "Kuhio Beach Girl" LP. But I have hours and hours of tape of Uncle Harold playing at the Halekulani Hotel, and on the one occasion when I was fortunate enough to be asked to perform at Steel Guitar Week at the Halekulani, my exceedingly able accompaniment was Helene Woodward, Cookie Among, and Harold. |
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Dave Mayes
From:
Oakland, Ca.
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Posted 2 Jul 2012 6:16 pm
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Stellar call Bill! I had ruled Eddie out because his Tradewinds Records work with Bill Lincoln and Bob Davis was so chordal, in comparison to these recordings with Linda.
Thanks. |
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Martin Curnan
From:
Lihue, Kauai
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Posted 3 Jul 2012 11:53 pm Tradewind Records
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| In researching the net I found an article that said that Benny Rogers was the steel player when Linda Dela Cruz played on the Tradewinds Label in 1957. You can find the article at www.iodalliance.com and search for Linda Dela Cruz. If Bill WYNNE or anyone else could give me the mana'o on this article I would appreciate it. |
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Wally Pfeifer
From:
Illinois, USA
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Posted 4 Jul 2012 6:17 am
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Not to hijack the post but just wanted to correct
Martin's reference to Harry Bs website. It is www.territorialairwaves.com
Has anyone checked it lately? Harry has 19 different programs on his website dating back to 3/2/12. All available at anytime. And you can
FF and miss the commercials etc.
Wally |
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Don Kona Woods
From:
Hawaiian Kama'aina
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Posted 4 Jul 2012 8:36 am
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Martin I found your source interesting reading. Thanks for identifying it. The source is more specifically found here - http://www.iodalliance.com/album/linda-dela-cruz-hawaii-s-canary/172141
Martin, when Linda recorded with Tropical Recording Company, the resident band for the recordings included Benny Rogers on steel guitar, but the album in question is who did the steel guitar playing on the Tradewind Recordings.
I do not see Benny Roger as being credited as the steel guitarist on the Tradewind recordings. The only credit from your source on the Tradewind album is Tommy Castro on the song, Royal Hawaiian Hotel. He is also fairly easy to identify because of his single string playing. But who is playing steel on the other songs. It certainly isn't Tommy.
Bill Wynne says it is Eddie Pang on the Tradewind recordings. I would be interested to hear a little more from Bill at how he arrived at this conclusion and what his sources are. I have not heard enough of Eddie Pangs playing to be able to identify it.
I checked with Harry B. Soria, a long time musical historian in Hawaii, and he thinks it is Harold Hakuole. It sounds a lot like Harold's playing to me.
One of the long standing problems with Hawaiian musical albums is they never gave credits on the albums, so a lot of this has been educated guesswork. Some albums contained one or more steel guitar artists which could only be identified by their playing styles. Some steel guitarist you could definitely identify but then you had some steel guitarists that sounded like each other or had similar styles which further complicated the identification.
In times past, I used to get a lot of my historical information on Hawaiian recordings from Merle Kekuku who knew much about this because he had a long association with the entertainers and the recording artists during the Golden Age of Hawaiian music. But he is now gone.
Aloha,
Don |
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Bill Wynne
From:
New Jersey, USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 5:59 am
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One truth about a lot of the most talented Hawaiian steel players is that they were true chameleons. Listen to Alan Akaka who can - depending on who he is playing with - mimic Benny Rogers, Jules Ah See, Steppy de Rego, Tommy Castro, or even Jake Keli'ikoa. The old timers were the same way. Jules Ah See played both pedal and non-pedal steels on the same albums (such as with Alfred Apaka and Mahi Beamer). Barney Isaacs played pedal on at least two albums (despite assertions elsewhere on this forum that he did not). I do not always know when David Keli'i is playing. He played as many as 8 different tunings and kept three guitars on stage at all times. David Keli'i often didn't even sound like himself when moving from one tune to the next. (This pronouncement comes from my years and years of actual Hawaii Calls broadcast tapes from the "Keli'i era" - most of mine dating from 1952 to 1955.)
Another truth - true long ago as it is still true today - is that these Hawaiian music artists don't always use the same musicians in the studio that they use on their live dates. There are no such loyalities and few "bands." Na Palapalai is a duo, but they recently put out recordings featuring steel guitar. I practically broke an eardrum trying to figure out who the steel player was. Most of the time it sounded like Alan Akaka, but on one tune I was sure it was Jeff Au Hoy. As it turns out, there were three different steel players on this one record - Alan, Jeff, and Greg Sardinha. The Kahauanu Lake Trio was a quartet in the studio - adding a lead guitarist. You never heard those lead licks at a live "K" Lake performance. Sterling Mossman used Barney Isaacs almost exclusively in live performance, but he was not the steeler on Sterling's "Happy In Hawaii" LP.
Finally, reliance on memory is our worst source - regardless of personal relationships. I have been friends with Mahi Beamer for nearly a decade now, and if you ask him who played steel on his second LP, he will tell you he has no recollection whatsoever. These sessions took place more than 50 years ago. How many of us remember what we had for breakfast yesterday? But nowhere is this more true than the recordings made in Hawai'i during this period which were made haphazardly and cavalierly. Nobody ever thought that they were making history. So nobody bothered to document it. These recordings were made in makeshift studios long after state of the art equipment was available. These are more like field recordings - attempts at preserving voices, tunes, and songs, but not stars.
Most of this identification comes from listening, and that is a fallible process. In the last three years alone since I joined this forum, I have watched not only myself, but Derrick Mau, Basil Henriques, Jeff Au Hoy, and others make erroneous identifications of these steelers. Who are we testing? The steelers or each other? Nobody has yet satisfactorily identified the dual steel players on Lani Kai's "Island Love Songs." Nor has anybody identified the pedal steel player on Andy Cummings' "Songs of Hawaii." All we have are educated guesses.
That being said, here is all I know about these recordings.
In the 1950s and 60s, a lot of the Hawai'i recording companies had house steelers (just like Stax had Booker T. and Donald "Duck" Dunn on roster). The main steeler at Waikiki Records was Barney Isaacs because he was also their A&R man. The main steeler at Makaha Records was Billy Hew Len since he had a relationship with their chief arranger, Benny Saks. And on 95% of the Tradewinds Records output, the steel player was Eddie Pang. From my listening, the player on the Linda Dela Cruz albums sounds like Eddie, and there are other Linda Dela Cruz albums that Harry B. Soria did not play on his recent show on which it sounds as if Eddie Pang also played.
That in no way confirms that it is Eddie Pang.
The document provided by Martin does not indicate that Benny played on those Tradewinds sides. It does not even indicate that Benny was still her steel player by the time those sides were made. It says that Benny was her steel player in 1957. The Tradewinds cuts were made in 1958. But even if Benny played with her live, there is no guarantee he went into the studio with her.
I can confirm that it is not Harold Hakuole. Harold's favored tuning - especially for vamps - was E13. Most of Harold's playing was not single string but, rather, block chord. Most of the vamps that Harold plays are full chord - not single string such as you hear on the Linda Dela Cruz recordings. I have never heard Harold play that way, and I have lots of tape of Harold playing that was not available commercially. So what, exactly, are we comparing to what if Harold - by his own admission - rarely made a steel guitar recording?
I had a relationship with Harold during which we spent many hours talking about everything and nothing. When I heard him play steel at Halekulani for the first time in the early 2000s, I asked where I could find recordings of him playing. He indicated that there were only two - the final Linda Dela Cruz album (not featured on Harry B's program last week) and one with Noelani Mahoe. I asked about the earlier albums by her, and he was adamant that was not him playing. And if you listen to the earlier albums and the later albums side-by-side, the playing is altogether different.
If you want to compare for yourself, go to iTunes and download a song titled "I Whisper Gently To You" from the album "Eia 'Au o Noelani" by his friend Noelani Mahoe. This is one of the few cuts Harold made on steel. He doesn't play single string through the entire song.
So while I may not be certain on Eddie Pang, I am quite certain that it is not Harold. I have no vested interest in the correct answer. But I do mind a little bit feeling attacked for an unverifiable answer. The engineer, the producer, and all of the musicians on that record are likely dead. So we could do this for a long time, and all we are going to have are educated guesses. I guess I am wondering what good comes from the final, correct answer? If we're giving out prizes, I'll try harder next time. 
By the way, Harry B. Soria is a friend. I would not have had a recording contract in Hawai'i had it not been for him, and we have appeared together many times since. (He called me at home to encourage me to enter the Aloha Festivals Falsetto Contest yet again after I had already lost three times. I had given up. Harry pulled me back in.) I became a DJ spinning Hawaiian music because of my Hawaiian friends who used to send me his weekly shows on cassettes to listen to and learn from. So I was a fan and acolyte long before I ever met him. But notice that even he only "thinks" this is Harold Hakuole. This man keeps meticulous notes. He does not work from memory. If he does not have an interview cited with Harold, Linda, or anyone else associated with that session, then he - like the rest of us - is guessing.
The one assertion I ponder is when Don says "It sounds a lot like Harold's playing to me." If there is so little of Harold's playing on record to compare this to, than what are you comparing it to? If there are other examples of Harold's playing on record, I, too, would like to collect them. |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 9:04 am
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| Don't feel attacked, Bill, it's not a debate war but more just an effort to know the truth of which cannot always be known, maybe ever. We always toss our thots around here and just hope for the best to come of it. And if there's a toothless attack dog in the pack, it's good ol' Don, he may gum you to death in discussion but that's about it. |
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Don Kona Woods
From:
Hawaiian Kama'aina
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 9:13 am
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So you think that I am a gummer, huh Ron?  haha
Please, also be advised, I only fight with feathers! 
Ron, you did read my motives though, because I just wanted more detail from Bill. That was accomplished.
Bill, your response to my request is much more than I could have ever expected.
You did some very good and sharp analysis with alot of detail from your experience. It could not have been done any better. I fully respect your analysis.
As you say at this point, we have limited ability to get at the facts and are left to educated guessing. I guess it is better than nothing.
I think that this thread is evidence that we would all like to know the facts as they are with respect to these renown Hawaiian steel guitar players.
I only wish that these Recording Companies would have realized it back then and gave proper credits.
Again Bill, mahalo nui for your excellent contribution. It helped better educate us all. 
Aloha,
Don |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 10:51 am
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| Don, getting Bill's feathers a bit ruffled is about the only way we ever get to hear from him, and he usually let's loose with a good/informative post, so it's a win win for all. I know you didn't mean to, but I support more of it! |
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Wally Pfeifer
From:
Illinois, USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 3:35 pm
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I don't give a rat's a-- who plays it. If it's
Hawaiian music and Hawaiian steel,--I love it.
Maybe Joe Blow was playing. ? ? ?
 Wally |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 3:59 pm
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| Wally, do you mean THE Joe Blow? |
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Martin Curnan
From:
Lihue, Kauai
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 4:14 pm
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| I must say I got responses from the top historians on the steel guitar with information I would of never known. One thing I do know who ever the player on those cuts was amazing. Now I have to listen to all those great players that were mentioned. Thank you all for your response. Aloha from Lihue. |
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Don Kona Woods
From:
Hawaiian Kama'aina
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 5:59 pm
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Double Dip
Last edited by Don Kona Woods on 5 Jul 2012 9:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Don Kona Woods
From:
Hawaiian Kama'aina
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 5:59 pm
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Ron speaks of me by saying,
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| I know you didn't mean to, but I support more of it! |
Ron, does this mean that you want me to do a little more feather fighting to stir up the pot to get more information forth coming on this Forum. Am I reading you right?
Aloha,
Don
Last edited by Don Kona Woods on 5 Jul 2012 9:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 5 Jul 2012 6:54 pm
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| Dr. Don, you have far better bedside manners than myself, so I'll defer to your tempered expertise in feathering out info from the more sensitive patients. I'll take on the psychos and criminal musically minded, together we'll cover the bases... |
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Wally Pfeifer
From:
Illinois, USA
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Posted 6 Jul 2012 9:34 am
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Hey, Ron
It maybe was THE Joe Blow. Or it could have been John Q Public or Jane Doe. Maybe even the Acme Hawaiian Band. Whoever they are,--I still like it.
I really don't need all the confusing possibilities.
I wouldn't remember it anyway. Time has taken its toll on my memory. 
Wally |
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Ron Whitfield
From:
Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA
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Posted 6 Jul 2012 12:57 pm
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| Wally Pfeifer wrote: |
| Time has taken its toll on my memory. |
Yes, time is a dbl. edged sword, and without the intrawebs we'd really be up schidtz creek. |
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