Living History

I posted this in SHOUT! but thought it might be worthy of a more permanent place :)

I met a lady today who was born in July 1927 and named "Aloha". The name intrigued me because I thought that 1927 was pretty much before Hawaii was in the consciousness of the general American public. Yes, Hawaii became a territory in 1898 and opened the first military base in 1907. But Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber's didn't open until the 30s, I had thought Hawaii to be pretty much off the radar at that time.

So I asked Aloha about the origins of her name. She said her father named her and he was a "romantic". He had told her that he had seen a movie in a theater about Hawaii shortly before she was born and that's where she got the Aloha name from. She didn't know the name of the movie, but my research shows there was a short documentary called "A Dash Through Hawaii" that was released in May of 1927. Could this have been the one?

Aloha told me as a teen, she had a good time with her "exotic" name. During WWII, she and her friend Ruby would drive 100 miles to San Diego where they would frequently encounter Sailors and Marines who were stationed there. She would have such a good time making up stories about her name to tell the servicemen that Ruby would insist that they take turns being "Aloha" so she could get in on some of the fun too! :lol:

Great story Mike!!!

I met a lady today who was born in July 1927 and named "Aloha". I had thought Hawaii to be pretty much off the radar at that time.
All things Hawaii had been the rage for years at that point and it didn't start to slow down until the mid 50s. The 1915 Pan Pacific Expo had a Hawaiian musical troupe entertain and that started the enduring craze to the point where only piano beat out the Hawaiian steel guitar in people's homes for many years. Electricity, radio, and travel helped continue the exceptional lure of a far away paradise. http://www.gansz.org/David/Guitars/Hawaiian/Hawaiian6.htm

Thanx for your story!

Just to throw in my two cents, Hawaiian music was HUGE in the teens and twenties. It's hard NOT to find a Hawaiian-themed tune on early Victrola, Columbia and Edison records. Titles like, O‚Brien is tryin‚ to learn to talk Hawaiian, My Waikiki mermaid, They're wearing ‚em higher in Hawaii, and Hello Hawaii, how are you? are all in my collection.

A lotta folks don't know that the mid century Hawaiian craze was the second big wave of fixation with Hawaii in the US. As mentioned above, in the 1920s the focus was mainly on Hawaiian music and ukulele playing. (The 20s was the time of the coon skin coat and ukulele playing college man cliche.)

Hawaiian 78s from that era are pretty common as is sheet music. (I usually rifle through sheet music piles at junk shops looking for cool tropical images.)

Some pictures snagged off the Internet:

1920s ukulele instruction books are pretty common as well:

If anyone's interested in the music of that era the CD Vintage Hawaiian Music - The Great Singers: 1928-1934 is a good collection of original recordings.

On 2010-12-23 08:54, woofmutt wrote:
A lotta folks don't know that the mid century Hawaiian craze was the second big wave of fixation with Hawaii in the US...

What, they didn't read the Book of Tiki !? :D (Sorrry, couldn't resist)

Indeed, If one would want to, one could divide the Pre-Tiki Polynesian pop period into two separate phases, the first being the Hawaiian music craze, which began around 1915, the second being the "Avalanche of Bamboo", as Jim Heimann calls it, in the 30s, when the first Polynesian nightclubs were built to house Hawaiian/Tahitian bands and dancers, among them a South Seas hideaway called Don The Beachcomber.

To me, this 1916 sheet music cover says it all:

Sheet music covers of the 10s and 20s are really the most prolific source of South Seas cliche imagery. If there ever was any question that the Hula girl was THE ambassador of the Polynesian pop world, sheet music covers really erase any doubts. She was cast for all kinds of tropically themed songs:

We see the same free-spirited mixing of tropical cultures that was present in later Tiki style. Hawaiian and Hapa Haole music conquered Broadway, and much more more than the later bamboo and Tiki crazes, even spread to Europe:

Stylistically, these graphics (as wonderful as they are) were too far away from the Tiki period to be included in my books.

I come also across evidence of this early Hawaiian Music craze whenever I look through a stack of Victrola records at an estate sale - there are always one or two Hawaiian records for me to pick out and add to my collection.

The 1924 photo below of downtown St. Louis gives more evidence of how popular Hawaiian music was with the American public:

:up: There were schools of Hawaiian music like this in most major cities.

:down: Charles Lindbergh's ukelele, a gift from the people of Hawaii after his famous solo Atlantic crossing.

A lotta folks don't know that the mid century Hawaiian craze was the second big wave of fixation with Hawaii in the US...

What, they didn't read the Book of Tiki !? :D

Sven, I heard a rumor that Santa is putting one under the tree for me :D

Yes Woof, I was one of those people but now I'm a little more educated. Thank you all for your comments. Aloha is a sweet old lady and she got all excited when I asked about her name :D

I realize that we've kinda hijacked the original intent of this thread, but pre-tiki is fascinating to me for many reasons. Now, if anybody is interested in actually hearing what we are talking about, the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project has thousands of MP3s from the acoustic through early electronic recording eras. Here are the results from a keyword search for "Hawaii."
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?query=hawaii&queryType=%40attr+1%3D1016

I should mention that a search for "tiki" in this era yields NO results.