Hawaiian String Virtuoso: Steel Guitar Recordings of the 1920's

King Bennie Nawahi

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 13, 2000)
• Original Release Date: June 13, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Yazoo
• ASIN: B00004TE0X
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #158,697 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

Along with Sol Hoopii, King Bennie Nawahi was the undisputed master of Hawaiian steel guitar music in the 1920s and '30s. His lyrical playing and virtuosic solos were as jazzy as the guitar playing of Django Reinhardt and his repertoire ranged from island tunes to Tin Pan Alley to the blues. It's hard to imagine that the same guy performing the slow and sentimental "Mauna Kea" could churn out a rollicking number like "Dinah" (here with the Red Devils), but Nawahi possessed a versatility and proficiency that few instrumentalists could match (in the '20s, he was even crowned "King of the Ukulele" for his numerous wins in stateside uke contests). On Charles B. Smith's "My Little A-1 Brownie," he juggles steel guitar, mandolin, standard guitar, and harmonica solos on the same tune (Benny Goodman did the clarinet solo). Nawahi is a legendary figure in Hawaiian music history, and liner notes by Robert Armstrong (whose Cheap Suit Serenaders would cover the Hawaiian's "Singing in the Bathtub" five decades after its release) tell the entire story. A great disc. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love this CD!, June 27, 2000

By	C. Thompson (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a very charming CD. I have long wanted something just like it but didn't know what to look for. It has a touch of both the 1920's and Hawaii, at what surely must have been a simpler, less commercial time in Hawaii's history. I cannot compare it to another CD as I am not familiar with others in this genre, but at this moment this one is sufficient because it is wonderful! My favorites include Singing in the Bathtub, Ukele Benny, Guitar Rhythm, and last but not least, Mauna Kea, my absolute favorite, which I originally discovered in a short animated film called Black Hula, and which ultimately led me to King Bennie Nawahi. Really, you've got to check it out!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Virtuoso, August 20, 2000

By	"verdifan" (North Arlington, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

The title tells it all...King Bennie Nawahi was a true virtuoso, playing every conceivable form of guitar and ukulele (sometimes all on the same song!), and having a great time doing it. You'll have a great time too with this CD, which was culled from recordings of the 1920's, and encompasses music of many genres...Hawaiian, country, jazz, novelty...you name it. The guitar work is simply phenomenal. This is happy, happy music played by a true master.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bit of everything, September 14, 2004

By	Pharoah S. Wail (Inner Space) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I love this disc, to put it bluntly. I'm not any sort of expert on any of the various Hawaiian musics, but I have a number of discs and this one is my favorite (so far). A few years ago at a Led Kaapana concert the woman behind me said she had something like 400 Hawaiian albums. She was way (and I mean waaaay) beyond me in terms of her breadth and depth of Hawaiian knowledge, but that never stopped me from writing a review. =)

For me, the magic of King Bennie is that he has it all. He's up on that top rung of steel guitar playing with Sol Hoopii, but he also has that Vaudeville quality of being an excellent entertainer. His music is so much fun! This is music for your whole body. I think it's impossible to listen to this disc and not be tapping and grooving along with it almost the entire time.

The U.S.A. lost something when the television became the standard of entertainment (at least for many people). King Bennie had something that you don't often find anymore. Today a musician is serious, or they are fun. They are a virtuoso, or they are a folky or a rocker. Or maybe they don't even play anything at all and everything is slick production. The boxes and parameters for any "one" performer oftentimes seem to be smaller today, but not so for Bennie. He may play a slow, touching blues, or he may play the goofiest, funniest, stupid little song and pluck out a gorgeous little solo right in the middle of it. He may play a lonesome old hula, or some Vaudeville shtick with an obnoxious, laughing kazoo solo wailing away. If King Bennie was a tv show, he'd be a sitcom one minute, a drama the next, and still have time to play a gorgeous, melodic solo that hits you like your favorite Roots or Lonesome Dove-quality miniseries.

I think the comparisons to Django are unfortunate, for both Bennie and Django. It strikes me as being made for no other reason than they were both guitarists who recorded before WWII, because that is where the similarities end. Yes Django often played faster, but Bennie was a more melodic player. There is no comparision to be made in terms of tone, and Bennie was a fantastic slide player so that is a whole other dimension right there. If you are dead-set on wanting some sort of King Bennie and a straight string-swinger comparison, the only apt comparision I'd say is to Oscar Aleman. Not because they play similarly, but because they both obviously had so much fun. There is certainly more of a sense of unabashed enjoyment coming from the musics of Oscar and Bennie than there is from Django's music. I'm not taking anything away from Django, I'm just saying that his music generally sounds as if he took himself so seriously that "fun" was beneath him, musically speaking. Beyond that, Bennie pre-dates both of them. He was truly a brilliant musician.

Bottomline: Take this music for what it is. Fantastic Vaudevillized string-swinging hula-blues played by one of the best steel guitarists of all time (that I know of so far).