The Steel Guitar Forum

For those of you who love the old South Seas adventure movies the complete Paradise Isle from 1937 can be downloaded at this site:
http://www.archive.org/details/paradise_isle




The sound quality varies throughout, but luckily the musical parts are pretty good. Lani McIntire's Hawaiians do the backings. Movita sings and plays the uke, and of course we hear the original version of Sam's party piece. George Piltz, another well remembered Hawaiian musician, plays Tono in a supporting role. Much of the film was shot on location in Samoa and those scenes are now of historical interest. It was a Monogram production which is now defunct. One touch I love is the use of bamboo letters in the titles. I never thought I would get to see this one. Aloha DM

To my Ear this was played in the C#Minor tuning with a lot of of three note forward slants. This was the way I was taught from my Hawaiian Teacher in 1944.

Billy, in this short soundie Sam is miming with an acoustic guitar but you can see those forward slants. I have yet to play along in C#m7 tuning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbQ7Dq_FgGw

Thanks for posting that, David.
I love these old films! I've never seen this one before.
Everytime I see one of these I end up learning a song or 2! I've already started putting together a version of the title song, works well in A6 tuning. Sounds a little too high on the E6.
"The Hurricane" is a fave ("Moon of Manakoora")
"Waikiki Wedding" ("Sweet Leilani" & "Blue Hawaii")
The list goes on and on and has likely been covered in other posts here.

Hi Rick, The Hurricane and Waikiki Wedding are big favorites of mine too. Another good Dorothy Lamour movie theme that works well on steel guitar is "Moonlight and Shadows" from Jungle Princess 1936.

Thanks for the link David, really enjoyed the movie!
It's right up there with "Pagan Love Song" and "The Hurricane".
1937 was a great year for steel guitar...wish I could have been there

David - U beaut - trust an Aussie to come up with such a pearler. It was listening to playing such as this that prompted me to pose the question on the forum some time ago - are we really doing any better now than then? Take away your multi-necks, stands, pedals, reverb, foot controls - just a six string guitar on your lap and basic amp. - can you think of any of today's players that could do much better? Personally, I do not think we can but I got shot down and was told you cannot compare between now and then - it is like comparing apples with oranges. But the bonus for this household was he sasa. My wife is Samoan and I said to come and have a look at how they did the sasa when she was two years old. Pretty well the same now - I guess there are only a certain number of body movements that can be used. We will be having our own sasa in a couple of weeks at our 50th wedding anniversary. I hope you wish this palagi well. Thanks again David.

Mac McKenzie wrote:can you think of any of today's players that could do much better? I do not think we can and was told you cannot compare between now and then.

When it comes to the steel it's quite easy to do a decades apart comparison, it's simply a person, the steel w/maybe an amp, solo or in a group, not too complicated. There is no comparison, today is the dark ages vs the golden era, with the inevitable handful of standouts in today's field of whom most may have had trouble getting any steel work back in the day.

Aloha Mac,or should I say Talofa, you and your wife have a special perspective on the Samoan content of Paradise Isle. Congratulations on your half century. I'm glad I was able to pass the Paradise Isle website on to appreciative people. Irving Johnson had the schooner Yankee in Samoa in 1937 and she appears in the few Samoan scenes in the movie The Hurricane, another one worth digging up. And yes I agree on the wonders of the little six string Hawaiian guitars.

Thanks, several years hence, for this! Just the other night I watched "Waikiki Wedding" for the first time, having cajoled myself to order a relatively cheap Bing Crosby collection on Amazon (found it amusing, if a bit of a B movie...humorously my elementary aged children picked the moment to join me watching it right as Martha Raye's character sang a paean to intoxication, with the song "Okolehao"). I was just tinkering with the chords to Paradise Isle when I thought I'd google for Sam Koki's original and found this old thread! The story of Jerry Byrd sitting in a movie theater several times running to figure out how he did it is probably well known. Will have to watch it soon...

Hi Nic, If there was an grading for South Seas adventure movies, it should have been in giant clams, as in many of them, a pearl diver gets his foot caught in one. It is also the theme of Roy Orbison's Leah.

Aloma of the South Seas with Dorothy Lamour gets 4 clams. The high rating being for the sound track music.

Just watched the one David put up. Enjoyed the movie. Not much steel guitar, and the style was 30s I guess !!