Chasing Rainbows

A Tribute to Don Ho

Don Ho
Donald Tai Loy "Don" Ho (in Chinese characters, 何大來) (August 13, 1930 -- Aprll 14, 2007) Don Ho on his 1969 Greatest Hits album.
Background information
Birth name	Donald Tai Loy Ho
Also known as	Don Ho
Born	August 13, 1930
Origin	Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Died	April 14, 2007 (aged 76)
Genre(s)	Hawaiian Pop Music Easy Listening
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instrument(s)	Vocals
Years active	1959 – 2007
Label(s)	Reprise Records
Associated acts	The Ali‘is
Website	www.donho.com

Because of the massive media coverage of the slaughter at the Virginia Tech Campus, other news stories worthy of coverage were pushed aside.  A case in point is the passing of a great entertainer, Don Ho.  In a tribute to the man and the entertainer and as a tribute to my friend and his mom who never missed one of Don Ho's shows, the following is my memoriam to Mr. Ho. 

Don was born in the little Honolulu neighborhood of Kakaako of Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, German parentage but soon moved to Kaneohe. Don's climb to today's heady heights began in a cocktail lounge in the windward Oahu town of Kaneohe called Honey's, named after his mother. After returning from the Air Force, Don took over Honey's in Kaneohe, Hawaii. "When I took it over, the place was empty," says Ho. It was packed everyday during the war years. My dad said 'Son, why don't you go make music." Ho gathered a couple of friends who knew how to play musical instruments and started a band. "I was terrible," says Ho. "So, I just played very softly." Needless to say, business boomed.

Playing and learning from the talented musicians he hired for shows, Ho created his own musical image. In 1962, Ho began playing at Duke's in Waikiki. "That's when things started happening for us with records, TV shows and everything," says Ho. These were the days of Don's greatest development as an entertainer and a star. Backing him were the sensational five Aliis, playing piano, drums, two guitars, xylophone and doubling on half a dozen other instruments. Don presided at the organ, a glass of scotch in his hand, a cigarette burning in the ashtray. (Not anymore. He quit drinking and smoking fifteen years ago) The music was outstanding; the humor was fast and snappy. Tourists came, but so did locals and, after a while, visiting Hollywood stars--any of whom might take to the stage. Raising his glass in salute, Don would urge the audience to "suck'em up," and they did.

Those rowdy, rollicking years brought stardom to Don and made Duke's Hawaii's most popular nightclub. Don, the Aliis, Duke Kahanamoku, Kimo McVay, young singers like Robin Wilson, Angel Pablo, Sam Kapu and everybody else on stage had a ball every night. The audience felt it and shared it and kept coming back for more. During his years at Duke's, Don literally erupted on the national show biz scene, first and most suddenly in a two-week engagement at Hollywood's ultra-posh Cocoanut Grove in 1966. His opening night was a triumph, breaking all previous attendance records, and he went on to play to turn-away crowds nightly.  Taken from Wikipedia and www.donho.com.

Louis Armstrong: A Legacy

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Early Days in New Orleans

Armstrong was born in one of the poorest sections of New Orleans on Aug. 4, 1901. "He was a prodigy," says art historian and curator Marc Miller, "a hard-working kid who helped support his mother and sister by working every type of job there was, including going out on street corners at night to sing for coins." At age 7, he bought his first real horn--a cornet. When Armstrong was 11 years old, juvenile court sent him to the Jones Home for Colored Waifs for firing a pistol on New Year's Eve. While there, he had his first formal music lessons and played in the home's brass band. After about 18 months he was released. From then on, he largely supported himself as a musician, playing with pick-up bands and in small clubs with his mentor Joe "King" Oliver. Oliver was one of a handful of noted musicians in New Orleans--along with Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet and others--who were creating a distinctive and widely popular new band music out of blues and ragtime. Soon, sheet music publishers and record companies would make jazz a household name.

Chicago and New York

The early 1920s saw Armstrong's popularity explode as he left New Orleans for Chicago to play with "King" Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, and then moved on to New York, where he influenced the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra with improvisation and a new musical vocabulary. When he returned to Chicago in 1926, he was a headliner on records and radio, and in jazz clubs, wowing audiences with the utter fearlessness and freedom of his groundbreaking trumpet solos. His "scat" singing transformed vocal tradition and musicians studied his recordings to hear what a horn could do. It has been said that Armstrong used his horn like a singer's voice and used his voice like a musical instrument.  In 1929, he returned to New York, where he performed at Connie's Inn in Harlem and on Broadway in Connie's Hot Chocolates, and made his first nationwide hit recordings. Jazz was becoming a worldwide phenomenon and Armstrong was its leader, as was recorded in the November 1934 issue of Music: Le Magazine du Jazz (Brussels): "Armstrong arrives! Who is Armstrong? The true king of jazz. The only one who could convince those who doubt."  He was one of America's most significant artists by the late 1930s, and had created a sensation in Europe with live performances and records. His music had had a major effect on "swing" and the big band sound.

Ambassador Satch

After World War II and though the early years of the Cold War, Armstrong served as "Ambassador Satch," spreading good will for America around the globe including State Department-sponsored tours and broadcasts in the '60s. He was especially well-received in the newly independent nations of Africa, marked by such events as a 1956 concert celebrating Ghana's independence, attended by more than 100,000 Louis Armstrong fans.

Although he was no stranger to racial prejudice himself, Armstrong rarely made public statements. In 1957, however, he publicly condemned the violence that swept Little Rock over school integration and how it was handled. "Do you dig me when I say, 'I have a right to blow my top over injustice?'" he said. For this statement, Armstrong was called a firebrand in newspapers across the country.

By the '50s, Armstrong was an established international celebrity--an icon to musicians and lovers of jazz--and a genial, infectiously optimistic presence wherever he appeared. His death on July 6, 1971, was front-page news around the world, and more than 25,000 mourners filed past his coffin as he lay in state at the New York National Guard Armory.

Armstrong summarized his philosophy in the spoken introduction to his 1970 recording It's A Wonderful World. "And all I'm saying is, see what a wonderful world it would be if only we would give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah."

Taken from The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute.com