GAA's Guide to Vintage Hawaiian Guitar Music

This is a guide to vintage Hawaiian guitar music (i.e. music from the 20's and 30's played on an acoustic lap steel guitar). Below are my recommendations for instructional materials and CDs. If you're interested in the more modern C6 lap steel tuning, check out my guide to C6 Instructional Materials.

Instructional Books and Videos

If you want to learn to play vintage Hawaiian guitar, then there is a limited selection of instructional materials.

• Learn to Play Traditional Hawaiian Guitar is a video by Bob Brozman put out by Homespun Tapes. It's excellent. It's 85 minutes long and is full of good information. The video includes a booklet with tabs. In the first part of the video he covers technique and history. Then he teaches four different vintage Hawaiian tunes. For the first two tunes, "Mai Kai No Kauai" and "Maui Chimes", he presents multiple versions ranging from simple to "hot". It gives one a good feel for how to put all the elements together to embellish a tune. The last two tunes are more advanced: "Moana Chimes" (Brozman calls it the "quintessential" Hawaiian guitar tune) and "Uheuhene", a jazzy tune. The video ends with a performance of "Ua Like No A Like". It's not tabbed out, but you should be able to pick it up by watching. Overall it's a nice balance between beginning and advanced material. He teaches the Low G tuning (DGDGBD). This is equivalent to the Open A tuning (EAEAC#E) which was commonly used for Hawaiian guitar until the mid-1930's. It's also the same as the Open G tuning used for bottleneck guitar.

• The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar is a book by Stacy Phillips published by Mel Bay. It comes with a CD. It's also very good, but it has a different approach. It has tabs for over fifty vintage Hawaiian steel tunes. Most of the tunes are "classics". The majority of the tunes are tabbed for the High G tuning (GBDGBD). About 20% of the tunes are other tunings: Open D (DADF#AD), G6 (GBDEGB) and Bm (GBDF#BD). The book has a lot of supplemental information. There are chapters on the history of Hawaiian music, a discussion of the elements of Hawaiian guitar, information about some of the players and tunes, a discography of vintage Hawaiian music and a bibliography. The CD demonstrates the tunes but they are at a slow tempo without accompaniment. You should get some of the vintage Hawaiian compilation CDs on Rounder and Folklyric (see below) so you can hear the originals recordings.

• A follow-on book, The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, Volume 2, is also available. It's a very good supplement to the original Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar. The format is the same. It tabs out twenty vintage Hawaiian tunes. Each tab is preceded with short discussion of the tune. The collection includes seven Sol Hoopii tunes, three Jim and Bob tunes ("Song of the Plains", "St Louis Blues" and "By the Waters of the Minnetonka"), one by Jules Ah See ("Hula Blues") and three "old style" tunes by David Burrows. Nearly all the tunes use the High G tuning. The remainder are in C6, Bm and an unusual D tuning. There's a section on turnarounds that beginners will find useful. Even if you're an experienced player who rarely uses tabs, you may find the advanced tabs (Jim and Bob tunes and Sol Hoopii's "Hula Girl") tabs useful.

Something that is more of a practice tool than an instructional tool is Play-Along with the Hawaiian Hotshots, a Hawaiian guitar play-along CD by Cumquat Records of Australia. The audio CD comes with a CD-ROM containing tabs for the steel guitar parts. It contains a mix of vintage and modern steel guitar tunes. Three tunes use the traditional High-A tuning (AC#EAC#E): "Chilli Blues", "An Orange Grove In California", and "Hilo March". I was pleased to find that "An Orange Grove In California" is easier to play than I thought.

If you play slack key guitar then you should note that Ozzie Kotani's beginning slack key book, Guitar Playing Hawaiian Style, contains some tunes that can be played on solo steel guitar. "Kani Ki Ho'alu" and "Manuela Boy" can be played on steel guitar as written. "Maunaloa" is playable with a few minor changes - you have to be creative when the song goes to the C chord and the ending needs to be changed slightly to make it easily playable on steel guitar.

Vintage Hawaiian CDs

Here's a list of some of the currently available CDs featuring vintage Hawaiian steel guitar. There is little overlap in the selection of tunes on these CDs. Buying one doesn't preclude buying any others.

All the CDs with the exception of the Remembering the Songs of our Youth are compilations of original 78 recordings. If you haven't listened to a lot of old recording you may find that it takes a while to get used to the surface noise and limited fidelity. However, once you get over that you may be surprised at the amount of detail you can hear on these old 78s.

• Hawaiian Steel Guitar Classics (Arhoolie/Folklyric 9027) - A very well chosen collection of 26 Hawaiian steel tunes. All of the key vintage steel players are represented - Sol Hoopii, Bob Pauole (Jim & Bob), King Bennie Nawahi, Sam Ku West, Sol Bright, etc. The liner notes are very good. If you only get one CD then this is a good choice.

• Vintage Hawaiian Music: Steel Guitar Masters (Rounder 1052) - Another nice collection with good liner notes. Sixteen tunes.

• Vintage Hawaiian Music: The Great Singers (Rounder 1053) - Nice collection, good liner notes, sixteen tunes. Even though it is a collection of vocals nearly every cut features steel guitar.

• Sol Hoopii: Master of the Steel Guitar Vol 2 (Rounder 1025) - Sol Hoopii is a true master of Hawaiian steel guitar. This CD contains tunes from 1927 to 1951. Many of the tracks feature electric steel guitar. It includes detailed liner notes with information about each tune. There is also a Master of the Steel Guitar Vol 1 (Rounder 1024). It covers 1926 to 1930. The liner notes are not as detailed as the Volume 2 liner notes. I found the Volume 1 harder to listen to - the recording quality isn't as good and the tunes are a little more "primitive". However, once you get into it, it is very enjoyable to listen to.

• History of Hawaiian Steel Guitar (Cord International HOCD34000) - A very good collection of Hawaiian steel guitar music from 1927 to 1950. It includes a 16 page booklet with detailed liner notes describing the players and the tunings used. The booklet is nicely illustrated with photos of vintage Hawaiian guitars. Only the first eight cuts are acoustic steel guitar. The rest are electric steel guitar and can't really be considered "vintage". It does let you hear how Hawaiian guitar evolved after electrification and the switch to other tunings.

• Ho'Omana'o I Na Mele O Ka Wa U'i (Remembering the Songs of Our Youth) (Rounder 6028) - This is a modern recording of vintage Hawaiian music by the Tau Moe family and Bob Brozman. Tau Moe and his family are Hawaiian musicians who toured and recorded begining in the 1920's. This album was recorded in the 80's. There's a real charm to hearing them recreating these songs nearly 60 years after they first performed them. Bob Brozman has the vintage Hawaiians steel style down pat. His playing on this album is a great source of musical ideas for vintage Hawaiian steel.

• Waikiki Is Good Enough For Me and Rhythm of the Waves (Beer Records) - NOTE: Both are out of print! These are two incredible collections of Hawaiian steel music from the 20s and 30s. These are not not audio CDs. Each CD has nearly 200 tracks in MP3 format. They contain lots of great and rare tracks.

If you want to explore further, here are some collections dedicated to a single group or artist. These collections are nice because they give you a feel for the range of an artist and help you understand the elements that make up an artist's individual style. Note: if you're interested in Sol Hoopii, Beer Records has a complete discography of his commercial releases.

• Sol Hoopii: King of Hawaiian Guitar: Acoustic and Electric 1927 - 1936 (Cord International) - This is a nice collection spanning much of Sol's career. Cord International did a very good audio restoration job. Some of these tracks also appear on the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Classics and Master of the Steel Guitar Vol 2 albums, but most of the tracks are unique to this collection.

• Sol Hoopii: Radio Sol (Cumquat Records) - This is a collection of Sol Hoopii radio transcriptions from 1935 and Decca recordings from 1938. These aren't "vintage steel guitar" tracks - all are electric lap steel and all seem to use modern tunings. It is an excellent collection. The recording quality is very good. Many of these tunes appear on the other Sol Hoopii collections, however these are not the same recordings. It's fun to contrast these recordings with earlier versions of the same tunes.

• Sol Hoopii: Sol Hoopii in Hollywood (Grass Skirt Records) - This is a collection of Sol's earliest recordings made in 1925/1926 on a small label in Los Angeles. It's interesting to hear how developed his style was even in these early recordings. Nice liner notes give some historical background on the record label and the record business in the 1920's.

• Sam Ku West: Hawaiian Hula Blues (Grass Skirt Records) - Sam Ku West's recording of "Huehue" has always been one of my favorite vintage steel recordings. This is a collection of everything else he recorded in his short career. There are quite a few nice tunes in this collection. The liner notes, based on contemporary newspaper reports and information supplied by surviving members of Sam Ku West's family, are excellent. They give a sense of what it must have been like to have been a touring steel guitarist in the 1920's. Sol Hoopii and Sam Ku West were contemporaries and recorded many of the same tunes. In this Steel Guitar Forum post I point out some interesting similarities in their recordings.

• King Bennie Nawahi: Hawaiian String Virtuoso (Yazoo 2055) - Bennie Nawahi had a lively playing style. His tone is pretty distinctive because he played a single cone resonator. Nearly all the other Hawaiian steel guitarist of this era used a tricone resonator which has a much "sweeter" sound with more sustain. This album has a very wide range of musical styles - "hot jazz", happa haole, Hawaiian, blues and even country. The most interesting tracks are probably the "hot jazz" tunes he recorded with a small orchestra.

• Kalama's Quartet: Early Hawaiian Classics (Arhoolie 7028) - The vocals are one of the best things about this collection. The members of the group have very distinct vocal styles (especially the bass vocalist) and they blend together nicely. One unusual feature of the group is that on most tracks they have two steel guitarists. It's interesting to hear how they stay out of each other's way (e.g. one plays high while the other plays low, or one plays busily while the other leaves a lot of space). Because they were popular recording artists of the their time, it's a good collection of popular Hawaiian tunes from that era.

Feel free to contact me if you have any comments. Visit my home page for pages on related subjects (such as Jim and Bob, the Genial Hawaiians).

 visits since April 21, 2003
 
Updates:
09/09/02 - Initial version
04/09/03 - Added links to albums
01/05/04 - Added note that "Waikiki Is Good Enough For Me" is out of print
06/06/04 - Added note about Vol 2 of "Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar"
10/09/04 - Added note about pieces in Ozzie Kotani's book
04/26/05 - Added note about C6 Instructional Materials and Brozman/Moe album
07/17/05 - Added Cumquat Records play-along CD.
11/08/05 - Added links for Kalama's Quartet, King Bennie Nawahi, Sam Ku West and Radio Sol CDs
11/23/05 - Added information about The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, Volume 2
03/31/06 - Moved to new server, added email contact, link to Jim and Bob page
12/11/07 - Fixed links to Cumquat CDs, added "Sol Hoopii:Acoustic and Electric 1927 - 1936" and "Sol Hoopii in Hollywood"
12/13/07 - Added note comparing Sol Hoopii and Sam Ku West, dropped "Rough Guide to the Music of Hawaii"
12/23/07 - Added link to Sol Hoopii discography