Music: Hawaii's Man Of Steel

The Red Devils, a Manhattan quintet, tears into Dinah--tears it up, rather, and tosses it like confetti over the giddy audience. Music historian Robert Armstrong defines the band's sound as a "unique blend of jazz, pop and hokum," and a few seconds into Dinah, the listener surrenders to the melange. The plucky violinist takes a solo, then a guy going infectiously nuts on tissue paper and comb. Finally it's steel guitarist King Bennie Nawahi's turn. He attacks the melody while caressing his instrument; his solo, like the best improvs, seems both wild and thoughtful. The full band convenes for a last mad-dash chorus, racing to Bennie's steel pulse. Who can hear this music, this musician, without feeling awe and joy?

The year of this recording by the Red Devils, a studio band that cut only a few sides, was 1931. America had started to realize that its economic Depression was more than a fad, like flagpole sitting; it was a way of life. Yet pop music remained a larkish enterprise. Financial devastation may have swatted America, but from the evidence on records and film sound tracks, people kept on humming and strumming.

Few artists expressed the verve and virtuosity of classic-era pop as smartly as Benjamin Keakahiawa Nawahi. The Honolulu native taught himself the acoustic slack-key guitar (resting on the lap, it is played with one hand manipulating the strings and the other moving a steel bar). He then adapted the Hawaiian style to almost every form of music percolating through vaudeville, speakeasies and grange halls. He was as comfortable playing Broadway songs, New Orleans jazz and country laments as he was his native tunes. And with versatility went a distinctive instrumental voice, one that smiles at the extra few notes he tosses into a melodic line, at the weird mix of sliding tones and pizzicato panache.

Nearly as astonishing as Nawahi's achievement is his obscurity. He is not to be found among the 3,300 musicians listed in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. A thrilling new 23-tune set, Hawaiian String Virtuoso (on the Yazoo label), gives ample aural proof that King Bennie deserved his royal honorific as much as jazz gents named Duke and Count. One listens to the set, culled by Armstrong and Sherwin Dunner from rare originals, and the '30s guitarist in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown comes to mind--the one who was right up there with Django Reinhardt. And one thinks he should have been a Hawaiian.

Nawahi was born in 1899, one of 12 children. As a teenager he played for pennies in the parks of Honolulu, often teaming with Sol Hoopii, who was later Bennie's chief rival as a steel guitar star. By his early 20s, and now adept in guitar, mandolin, ukulele and one-string cigar-box fiddle, Nawahi was ready for the mainland--and vaudeville.

His timing was perfect. The uke, inexpensive and easy to learn, had become the prime accessory for jazz agers. Hits like Ukulele Lady, Hula Lou and My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua made the Hawaiian sound, in its perky pop mutation, the hottest "world music" of its time. Nawahi, a showman as much as an artist, aimed to please. He could run through Kitten on the Keys at warp speed, or play Turkey in the Straw on the steel guitar using his foot as the steel bar.