Bizarre attempts at Polynesia...bandwagon jumpers of the golden age of tiki

In my ramblings I always pick up bizarre 50's attempts at Hawaiian records by people from other genres from the golden days when the tiki genre was being defined and laid out for us.....here's a few of the stars of that show so far: Hawaii via the dusty old west ala Marty Robbins? Hawaii with a doo-wop twist? Good old down home Les Paul style Hawaii? Or Polynesia as told by the Wild Goose himself?

Lovers Luau is quite good--lots of reverby production & the same old standards done LES PAUL style--I found that on CD and later sold it on ebay after throwing it into my iPod---not real ESSENTIAL but pretty good
Tennesee Ernie FORD? cripes--that CAN'T be good.....

Don't forget Hank Snow's attempt to cash in!

Snow in Hawaii

A few original tunes on there too!

Tiki Calendar for 2008

[ Edited by: swanky 2008-03-03 10:53 ]

hank snow totally rocks! :)

for the past few weeks i've been doing some pretty heavy research in "hillbilly hula" tunes. there is a LOT of cross over with old timey country western artists and hawaiian songs. i think it is due to the slide guitar, that is the gateway into attempting hawaiian songs.

weirdly enough, a lot of the original songs made up by these singers are actually pretty catchy. if you come to hooptylau, you will get a swingin' cd of all these almost hit-makers! yeeeeeeeeeeHAW!

I love the Hillbilly versions of exotica. Some of the great pedal steel players from Western Swing and Country did Hawaiian music as well, like Leon McAuliffe and Herb Remington. I think it was more of a case of steel guitar from early country influencing Hawaiian music, and vice versa, than it was bandwagon jumping. I have some Western Swing tunes from the 30s about Hawaii in my collection so it goes way back 20 years before the exotica craze hit its peak.

On other records Hank did other island tunes like "Hula Rock".

Then there's Speedy West's "West of Hawaii"

Good stuff.

From the immense popularity of Hawaiian music it's no wonder that countless pop musicians from all genres (western swing, hillbilly, country, r'n'b, rock'n'roll, pop, jazz or what ever you call it) did record hawaiian tunes incl. such famous Artists like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Connie Francis, Perez Prado, Andrew Sisters, Elvis, Bill Haley and many many others.

But are the listed examples really bizzare? It was mainstream. Annette's Hawaii Album has a kitsch factor where I could agree to call it bizarre. As English is not my mother language I think miss a lot of details in lyrics when you can say that the weirdness starts. So what other examples of Hawaiian pop music can you really call bizarre?

Many of the popular Hawaiian Pop tunes like (In The Middle Of The Island, Buddy Knox's Hula Love, Lips of Wine, those hula hoop songs) where translated into German and many of those results ARE bizarre as the lyrics are often extremely stupid and rubbish wrong translations (but a lot of FUN Of course! But only if you understand German)

And now back to the records discussed above, I personally love a lot of this stuff. In fact you can find many catchy tunes here, where you still can dance to. The Tennesee Ernie Ford record has probably the most danceable version of Pearly Shells that you can find (I play it a little bid slower), a great Version. He also does a great version on a very easy to find 45 from In The Middle Of The Island. & Btw. Hank's 'Hula Rock' was actually a cover of a Dusty Rose nr.5 hit.

In general it's also recommended to check the 45 boxes as many artists did only record one 45 side with a Hawaiian influenced tune.

[ Edited by: lemonsqueezer 2006-08-29 20:18 ]

I've got about 16 great Cowboy Hawaiian mp3s by Hank Snow (The singing Ranger). Really good stuff. Let me know if you'd like me to share them on Rapidshare. Other celebrity Hawaiian lps to consider include Bing Crosby and Burl Ives.

Sabu

Among some of my more "Bizarre" Hawaiian lps are a few in the genre of Hawaiian Dixieland. A strange mix.

Sabu

Sabu The Coconut Boy wrote:

I've got about 16 great Cowboy Hawaiian mp3s
by Hank Snow (The singing Ranger). Really good
stuff. Let me know if you'd like me to share
them on Rapidshare. Other celebrity Hawaiian
lps to consider include Bing Crosby and Burl
Ives.

Sounds good to me. Are you planning to zip them
into one file (I hope so). Looking forward to
hearing them.

Lord, and Hank Snow's Wahine looks like a Hawaiian Loretta Lynn..

One of my favorites...

Vic Damone's Strange Enchantment (1962)... orchestra arranged and conducted by Billy May... Very exotic stuff, especially for an Italian-American from Brooklyn.

You guys interested in Texas Swing, steel guitar, Speedy West should all check out Tiki Bong. He is very much into this stuff and has knowledge of most of it.

C'mon - what about THESE two?!
No collection is complete without;

Burl's huge mitts almost swallow up that l'il uke...

Ooooops...
Almost forgot - Liberace's brother, George!

NOT tiki..but that George Liberace LP is a FANTASTIC TRAINWRECK--ALL George LPs are BIZAARE TREASURES...we used them as PUNISHMENT MUSIC [http://members.cox.net/landbreade] and stuck the GEORGE LIBERACE CHA CHA in a coworkers brain for about a MONTH...she was singing it in the SHOWER

must keep... thread alive... too... many... bad albums...argh

On 2006-09-21 12:50, twitch wrote:
C'mon - what about THESE two?!

Not to mention the hit 45 Singles:

:)

Sorry - not from the golden age, but from 1978...

This one hurts... a lot.

I would love to find a version of Burl Ives' "Moon of Manakoora" Anyone got an MP3 they could send me?