Search - King Bennie Nawahi :: Hawaiian String Virtuoso: Steel Guitar Rec 1920's

A bit of everything

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 09/14/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love this disc, to put it bluntly. I'm not any sort of expert on any of the various Hawaiian musics, but I have a number of discs and this one is my favorite (so far). A few years ago at a Led Kaapana concert the woman behind me said she had something like 400 Hawaiian albums. She was way (and I mean waaaay) beyond me in terms of her breadth and depth of Hawaiian knowledge, but that never stopped me from writing a review. =)



For me, the magic of King Bennie is that he has it all. He's up on that top rung of steel guitar playing with Sol Hoopii, but he also has that Vaudeville quality of being an excellent entertainer. His music is so much fun! This is music for your whole body. I think it's impossible to listen to this disc and not be tapping and grooving along with it almost the entire time.



The U.S.A. lost something when the television became the standard of entertainment (at least for many people). King Bennie had something that you don't often find anymore. Today a musician is serious, or they are fun. They are a virtuoso, or they are a folky or a rocker. Or maybe they don't even play anything at all and everything is slick production. The boxes and parameters for any "one" performer oftentimes seem to be smaller today, but not so for Bennie. He may play a slow, touching blues, or he may play the goofiest, funniest, stupid little song and pluck out a gorgeous little solo right in the middle of it. He may play a lonesome old hula, or some Vaudeville shtick with an obnoxious, laughing kazoo solo wailing away. If King Bennie was a tv show, he'd be a sitcom one minute, a drama the next, and still have time to play a gorgeous, melodic solo that hits you like your favorite Roots or Lonesome Dove-quality miniseries.



I think the comparisons to Django are unfortunate, for both Bennie and Django. It strikes me as being made for no other reason than they were both guitarists who recorded before WWII, because that is where the similarities end. Yes Django often played faster, but Bennie was a more melodic player. There is no comparision to be made in terms of tone, and Bennie was a fantastic slide player so that is a whole other dimension right there. If you are dead-set on wanting some sort of King Bennie and a straight string-swinger comparison, the only apt comparision I'd say is to Oscar Aleman. Not because they play similarly, but because they both obviously had so much fun. There is certainly more of a sense of unabashed enjoyment coming from the musics of Oscar and Bennie than there is from Django's music. I'm not taking anything away from Django, I'm just saying that his music generally sounds as if he took himself so seriously that "fun" was beneath him, musically speaking. Beyond that, Bennie pre-dates both of them. He was truly a brilliant musician.



Bottomline: Take this music for what it is. Fantastic Vaudevillized string-swinging hula-blues played by one of the best steel guitarists of all time (that I know of so far).



"

Amazing cd ...

Kjell Thorsen | FISKARSTRAND / Norway | 06/21/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Abouth the King Ben Nawah CD. As a record collector. I must admit I've never before heard the name King Bennie Nawahi, BUT NOW I REALLY HAVE!. Of all the five stars avaiable, I would give this one six ... It proves once again that in the jazz and western swing area of the 20's and 30's you hardly can go wrong at all. I recomend this to guitar lovers everywhere, a real kicker !"

Great music

COMPUTERJAZZMAN | Cliffside Park, New Jersey United States | 09/16/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"King Bennie Nawahi was a true talent who is barely even remembered today, which is a shame, 'cause this music is so sweet sounding you gotta love it! If you like this kind of music, you should also get the CD "Acoustic Slide Guitar Volume Three-Acoustic Hawaiian Guitar Masters", which features great Hawaiian acoustic guitar, both old and relatively new. I also recommend anything by Sol Hoopii and Roy Smeck, two other guitar (and ukelele) masters of this genre from way back when."