The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi all, a while back there was a thread that Ron Whitfield and I participated in regarding getting some rarities loaded to public sharing sites. I decided I'd get things rolling today with this first installment of some stuff I have. Please note that all of these were digitized from home-made cassettes of either radio transcription disks or live performances, and in NO WAY infringe any copyrights. These files have 30-day retention as I am using a free Rapidshare account; if anyone misses them due to illness, vacation, or being on the road, please let me know and I'll re-post. If anyone has a paid sharing account of some sort with longer retention and feels like propagating them, please do! Links will be in following posts.

I have provided notes with titles where known. I tried not to be too heavy-handed with noise reduction and the quality varies, from pretty clean to very noisy in the case of the 1947 shows - transcription disk noise + shortwave noise + cassette noise in this case! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Finally, mahalo nui loa to Keoki Lake and Ron Whitfield for their generosity. Hoping to have some more items up soon.

six Hawaii Calls shows from 1947 featuring David Keli'i on steel

Dick McIntire - "Harmony Isle" shows 9 & 10

Dick McIntire - "Harmony Isle" shows 15 - 17

Barney Isaacs - Hawaii Calls solos 1973-74

First Steel Guitar Ho'olaule'a 1982, featuring Billy Hew Len, JB, David Keli'i, Barney Isaacs, JB's students

Pua Almeida - Hawaii Calls shows

Be sure to click the green (center) button on the Rapidshare page - you do NOT need to purchase RapidPro.

Some more "Harmony Isle" shows; numbering system does not reflect the show number, just the way the tapes were numbered by the owner.

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 1

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 2

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 3

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 4

Mahalo nui loa to CC Johnson for sharing these!

Mahalo Mike!
Between you & Baz I'll have enough Aloha Paradise to listen to for the rest of my life!
Happy Thanksgiving!

Heh, we Canucks celebrated Thanksgiving last month. Guess this is my Thanksgiving present to you guys south of the border.

Last one for this batch:

the Tapa Room Tapes

Mahalo nui loa to Basil Henriques; he performed painstaking audio restoration on the original material and I have not altered his MP3s in any way.

EDIT: I notice that some of the Rapidshare pages show the files as being of "0.00 MB" size, but all links work so please ignore that.

Thanks a lot for the links and files, Mike, Ron, CC and Keoki. Looking forward to hearing these!

It's a pleasure, Mike.

Holy cow! - this is priceless kush. Thanks so much for uploading.

Thanx for getting these up, Mike, they need to be heard instead of tucked away til they rot or get tossed. As soon as I dig thru my stuff again I'll get more off to you, like the first modern era steel guitar show in Hawaii, a star-studded evening in '73 that was once considered unrecorded but was actually semi-pro done.
I've got much more on mini-disc and reel-to-reel, but those formats are archaic now.
Maybe we can elicit others who have 'priceless' treasures they'd now care to share to jump on this opportunity Mike is providing and promote those recordings while they're still salvageable.

I would like to add my thanks to Mike, Keoki and Ron for the opportunity to hear these recordings. The Harmony Isle Radio Shows are surreal in concept and tonally tops.

thanks so much for this guys - i remember reading Jerry Byrds autobiography where he said in the late 30's he would tune into Hawaii Calls and i always wondered what they were like.

Eddie Bush carried on the wonderful standard Dick had installed with these Harmony Isle shows, they really created an atmosphere that captures the imagination, radio's coolest aspect, truly theater for the mind.
The Hawaii Calls shows from the '30s had a differing feel than what Webley Edwards brought to the later broadcasts, and with David Kelii on steel the overall sound was much more authentic. Jerry also said he'd wait like a hound for David's solos only to have the transmission fade out just as David would start and it'd naturally come back just as he finished... drove him nuts. The good old days, as they actually were.

Glad everyone's getting some enjoyment from the posts! Here are two more Hawaii Calls shows I found on the web - also copyright-free as far as I know:

December 29 1949

Circa 1959

These are both full shows of about half an hour, and are quite clean. The blogger with the '49 show also provided cover art, kinda small but nice:



Enjoy! As he mentioned, Ron and I will continue to collaborate as time and resources permit.

does anyone know the name of the beautiful song on the Hawaii Calls 1959 file at 14:25 - right after the announcer talks about the temp being 79o and rubs it in to the Canadians : )

**and excuse my ignorance if this is a tune everyones hates (ie tourist tunes) or should be standard knowledge - i'm just starting to dip my toe in the hawaiian waters.

Who hates tourist tunes? I'm only a tourist myself.

This seems to be a bit of "Aloha Sunset Land":

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/9981/

http://www.squareone.org/Hapa/a44.html

Note that the LOC entry doesn't credit the steel! Ain't that just the way...

haha - i just recall the story of the tourists coming up to Jerry in Hawaii with their requests...he would say, "let me guess, Pearly Shells?"

thats some beautiful steel playing, regardless.

Jerome Hawkes wrote:"let me guess, Pearly Shells?"

Thing is, he'd do those tunes but the best versions you'd ever hear by jazzing them all up once past the first part. Hiram and Kalani could play anything pre-rock.

one last question - i am assuming on those TAPA Room tapes, that is a Fender pedal steel....before i go nuts trying to figure that out.

that is some serious wicked steel playing that would rival anything from the west coast swing guys!

According to Basil Henriques' earlier post, that is Jules Ah See on a Fender pedal steel.

I've learned from a a member that my "public share has been exhausted" according to Rapidshare - won't be using them again! - so will do a re-post soon for those who missed it.

EDIT: here's something from the Rapidshare FAQ:

"I get the error message: Public Traffic exhausted

The owner of the file has no more Public Traffic, therefore no files from that customer can be downloaded. At 00:00 CET, the Public Traffic will be reset and you can start downloading files from him again."

So let's give it a day and try again. Thanks for your patience.

I was always under the impression that Jules played a Magnatone... well, two of them on stage (multi-neck variety with the twin pickups) on the Tapa Room tapes. Granted the fidelity of those tapes, I think Jules Fender Stringmaster sound is more like what you hear on the "Guitare Hawaïenne" cuts. Check out "Hawaii's Mahi Beamer" for his Fender pedal sounds (specifically the tunes "Pua Mae'ole" and "Kawohikukapulani"). I've never been able to detect any pedal playing on the Tapa Room tapes.

I think unless we can contact someone who was in the room, we may never know for certain, but you can actually hear the track Kawohikukapulani here on Youtube, and I tend to agree with Jeff! Moreover, there are pics here on the Forum and around the Web that show the Hawaiian Village Serenaders in the Tapa Room with Jules on a Magnatone. Here's one example found on someone's Flickr site.

Thanks Mike for the link! Coincidentally Sunbeam (the lower voice on Kawohikukapulani) visited us at the Corner Kitchen in Kapahulu two nights ago. She and Mahi are still going strong. Hard to believe that recording was made over 50 years ago (in my high school auditorium ).

Oh man, how cool is that! Is it Kupaoa you're playing with? I'll make that trip myself before too long hopefully - been way too long. I'll be the guy snarfling back mai-tais, shouting "Go Jeff!".

On another note, all links to the Rapidshare stuff are now refreshed.