How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music / John W
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Kīkā Kila . īkā il How the Changed the Sound of Modern Music Chapel Hill Published with © 2016 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved the assistance of the Designed by Richard Hendel Set in Garamond Premier Pro Anniversary Fund by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. of the University Manufactured in the United States of America Portions of this work appeared previously in somewhat different of North Carolina form in John W. Troutman, “Creating Community in the Confines Press of ‘Fine Barbaric Thrill’: Joseph Kekuku, a Hawaiian Manhattan, and the Indigenous Sounds of Modernity,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15, no. 4 (October 2015): 551–61. Portions of Chapter 6 appeared previously in somewhat different form in John W. Troutman, “Steelin’ the Slide: Hawaiʻi and the Birth of the Blues Guitar,” Southern Cultures 19, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 26–52. Reprinted with permission. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Cover image courtesy of Lani Ellen McIntire and HLC Properties, Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Title: Kīkā kila : how the Hawaiian steel guitar changed the sound of modern music / John W. Troutman. Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2016] | “Published with the assistance of the Anniversary Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.” | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015041086| ISBN 9781469627922 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469627939 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Hawaiian guitar—History. | Music—Hawaii—History. | Music—United States—History. | World music—History. Classification: LCC ML1015.G9 T76 2016 | DDC 787.8709969—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041086 CONTENTS Preface. B. B.’s Dreams vii Introduction 1 1 Guitar Culture in the Hawaiian Kingdom 10 2 Joseph Kekuku’s Steel Guitar and the Era of Overthrow 43 3 American Debut: The Making of the Steel Guitar Craze 74 4 Hawaiian Troubadours and the Global Reach of the Kīkā Kila 104 5 Holly-Hawaiians, Electric Guitars, and Glass Ceilings 130 6 The Disappearing of “Hawaiian” from American Music 153 7 Banishment, and Return: Seeking the Steel Guitar in the Hawaiian Renaissance 200 Epilogue. Remembrance and Kuleana 227 Notes 235 Bibliography 321 Acknowledgments 345 Index 347 PrefaCe B. B.’s Dreams Riley “B. B.” King was born on a cotton plantation near Indianola, Missis- sippi, in 1925. As a child in the Mississippi Delta, Jim Crow’s ground zero, he labored as a sharecropper, as did nearly everyone he knew. King was restless, however, and soon the backbreaking labor that he and his family endured in those cotton fields, combined with the call of Memphis’s bright lights, became too much for young B. B. to bear. Eventually, he found a way out, one built of six strings, wood, magnets, and wire; when he plugged it in, it burst with howls and despair that sounded far beyond his years. Eventually it, and the other gui- tars he would play for the rest of his life, would be named Lucille. B. B. King was famous and loved, winning presidential honors and indus- try awards. But at his heart, he was a troubadour, always ready to travel with Lucille in hand. He lived for the music until it inevitably outlived his body. His vision, his life, teemed with the stuff of American history, the good and the bad, that shaped his twentieth- century world. As a child, King sopped up the sounds around him like a sponge, twisting up all of these musical ideas in his head, and then cascading new sounds through his fingers as they worked the fretboard. His Mississippi Delta was not a land of isolation; he did not rehearse ancient field hollers from the days of slavery. And while he sang in the Baptist church, old time spirituals, ultimately, were not his game. He had radio. He could tune in the latest pop gems blanketing the countryside from New York City ballroom broadcasts; he could follow all the hit parades and keep up with the jazz kings and queens. Or, like he often did on Saturday nights, he could dial into the Grand Ole Opry on Nashville’s WSM. Yet through all of the sounds that competed for his imagination, one seemed to triumph above the rest. As he recounted it, it fundamentally shaped his sound as a bluesman. It was “that sound” of the Hawaiian steel guitar. “Well, I’d hear it on the radio,” he told National Public Radio’s Terry Gross in 1995. “I would hear the Hawaiian sound or the country music players play steel and slide guitars, if you will. And I hear that—to me a steel guitar is one of the sweetest sounds this side of heaven. I still like it, and that was one of the things that I tried to do so much, was to imitate that . that sound! I could vii never get it, I still have not been able to do it, [but] that was the beginning of the trill on my hand.”1 In his autobiography with David Ritz, he elaborated, “My technique of bending strings and trilling notes was giving me an approxi- mation of that steel pedal sound that haunted my musical dreams. Lucille was singing the blues better than me.”2 This book reveals the journey of the steel guitar, from its birth within the stunning guitar culture of late nineteenth- century Hawaiʻi, to its haunting the dreams of B. B. King and others, to its disappearance, and return, in its Hawai- ian homelands. It places an instrument at the center of the story, and follows its travels and players around the world. It is a story of modern innovation and global proliferation, hidden and obscured over time. Above all, it is a story of how a Native Hawaiian instrument changed the sound of the world. It is also a story close to my heart, as I have played the steel guitar for nearly half my life. During that time, I’ve played the instrument in some unusual places—from a dance hall in the middle of the Atchafalaya Swamp to grand English theatres; from a bowling alley in New Orleans to a film festival on the French Riviera. Once I played steel guitar at a comic book convention jammed inside a nondescript warehouse in Athens, Greece, surrounded by packs of roving dogs. The instrument seems unbounded by contexts; it creates a famil- iar sound in all of them. The road stories that spring from such experiences are the stuff of life for working musicians. They eclipse the boredom imbedded in long days on the road, or in the hours of downtime between sound check and showtime. Musi- cians have told these stories ever since they first discovered that they could get paid to play. But what first led me to this book was my realization that a little- known indigenous technology centers in each of these stories, these gigs. A Kanaka Maoli—a Hawaiian—instrument.3 Today the sound of the steel guitar is everywhere, it is practically impossible to avoid, no matter your musical pref- erences. So then why do this instrument and its origins seem so hidden from view? What can we learn from its travels, and where did it come from, anyway? Though it has been called into the service of the blues, country, rock, and countless other genres, the steel guitar was originally built to better serve the melodies composed by Hawaiʻi’s sovereigns. It fortified a Hawaiian culture then under attack by land- hungry hāole (foreigners) plotting to overthrow the kingdom. It soon spawned a yearning for Hawaiian music of unprecedented, global proportion, while it sparked musical revolutions in the United States. By the 1970s, however, it came to be shunned in some parts of the Islands, its sound equated with cultural loss rather than rebirth. It is an instrument with viii Preface a heavy history. The instrument has endured a challenged and storied, yet re- markably adaptable existence. It has changed how we hear, and expect to hear, music throughout the world. The Hawaiian steel guitar demonstrates how the past is profoundly implicated in musical performance. As I thought about writing this book, I wondered how I might stitch together the instrument’s vast and unruly history. The instrument humbled me as I began to learn of its origins, and the many traditions that it has inspired. Likewise, the reach of the instrument is far more expansive than I originally imagined. As a consequence, the book took me on what became an eight-ye ar research odyssey, from the Hawaiʻi State Archives to the British Library, from family reminiscences in Waimānalo to a luau under florescent lights inside a Holiday Inn in Joliet, Illinois. At each stop, a new history of modern music unfolded before me. Along the way I encountered extraordinary communities of musicians and their relatives, enthusiasts, scholars, and community activists. Granted, some of them identify themselves in more than one of those categories, but this book represents my effort to place all of them in conversation with one another. The task is daunting, the results certainly imperfect. The challenge of holding the attention of audience members with such diverse interests is one that any musician can identify with. Some scrutinize your instrument of choice. Some are interested in the sound of the band. Some are only listening for the lyrics. Some just want to dance.