Hawaiian

The Kahauanu Lake Trio – Hawaiian Style (1964)

  • Posted on June 24, 2009 at 2:17 pm
DSCF0157
DSCF0159


Having lived my entire life in a cold climate, one of the things I look forward to is escaping the winter cold by spending a week in Hawaii.  I’m fortunate enough to have relatives who are far better at managing their money than I am so there’s usually a spare room for me.  During my first trip there five years ago, I got hooked on Hawaiian music. Like a lot of first time visitors, it was the incredible voice of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole or “Brudda Iz” as he’s affectionately known, that drew me in.  If you don’t know anything about Iz, do yourself a favor and check out his music.  I won’t go into a full biography here but Iz sadly passed away in 1997 at the age of 38.  You rarely go a full day in Hawaii without hearing his stunningly beautiful cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

Once I had purchased the entire Brudda Iz catalog, the next logical step for me was to find out more about the roots of Hawaiian music and to start buying as much of it as I could afford.  Back in the tundra, there isn’t much selection of Hawaiian music at the local CD shop so I always try to stock up when I’m in Hawaii.  On my third trip, I had become a little disenchanted with the CD offerings at the local stores.  They all had the same selection and most of it was really just pop music with a Hawaiian twist.  I approached the manager at Border’s Books and asked if he knew anything about Hawaiian music.  Much to my amazement, not only was he practically an expert on the subject, he also directed me to his extensive inventory of Hawaiian music which included recordings that dated back to the 20′s.  Since my wife was shopping at a nearby store, I was temporarily without adult supervision and had no one to limit the ever increasing stack of CDs that he recommended.  I put a serious dent in the Visa card but I now had a rich history of Hawaiian music to get me through the rest of the frigid winter.  Sure I got a good scolding, but one $275 dress later……we were even.

That’s a long story to get to this week’s album.  I recently checked out a new over-priced thrift store near my home and discovered that all of their albums were $1.99 and to make matters worse, just about all of them were crap.  Let me digress for a moment and offer this advice to anyone who might run a thrift store or even those of you putting out old records at your next garage sale.  Records aren’t worth 5 cents if they’ve been sitting in someone’s basement and are covered with mold or scratches, let alone $1.99. Marking them $5 or some ridiculous price, just tells me that you’re an idiot.  Most of the time I won’t even waste my time looking through a pile of neglected records but “she who rules the roost” wanted to spend the next 2 hours looking at every item in the store so I was stuck.  Low and behold I stumbled on this gem and didn’t even bat an eye at the inflated price.

Kahauanu Lake is an important figure in Hawaiian music.  He’s credited with being one of the first musicians to use the ukulele as a lead instrument.  With his brother Tommy on the upright bass and Al Machida on guitar, he formed the Kahauanu Lake Trio in 1955.  Their style is a nice fusion of traditional Hawaiian music with hints of jazz.

There’s some nice info on the jacket such as the reason that Lake plays left handed.  His mother was a fairly well known musician and would frequently take the young Kahauanu to rehearsals where he passed the time by mirroring her ukulele fingering and strumming.

Hopefully this album will entice you to further explore the warmth of Hawaiian music.

Here’s a nice article from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, September 8, 2003.  http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/09/28/features/story1.html

Tracks:

Side 1

Side 2

Continue reading The Kahauanu Lake Trio – Hawaiian Style (1964)