"Bla"
James Daniel Pahhinui
(Big Knife Productions)
This long-awaited album from James Daniel Pahinui — known almost universally as Bla — is an impressive reminder of his contributions to the Hawaii music industry across six decades.
In the 1960s, Pahinui joined Peter Moon in founding the Sunday Manoa, the group that became the catalyst of the Hawaiian Renaissance. In the early ’70s he joined his father, Gabby Pahinui; his brothers Cyril, Martin and Philip; and his father’s friends Leland “Atta” Isaacs and Manuel “Joe Gang” Kupahu to form the Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band, aka The Gabby Band. The group’s albums are classics in 20th-century Hawaiian music.
In the ’80s, following his father’s death, Bla recorded notable solo albums. The most memorable was “The Way I Feel,” with its now-legendary promotional T-shirt that read “I feel Bla.”
In 1992 Bla, Cyril and Martin did an album as the Pahinui Brothers. Several years later George Winston invited the idiosyncratic guitarist — Bla plays left-handed but leaves the guitar strung in the normal fashion, for a right-hander, so that he picks the bass strings with his index finger and the higher strings with his thumb — to participate in his Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters series. A studio album, “Mana,” was released in 1997, and a collection of live performances, “Windward Heart,” came out three years later. It, too, was a musical landmark that documented the style and stage presence of a unique ki hoalu (slack key) master.
With “Bla,” which he co-produced with Milan Bertosa, Pahinui, now 71, displays the breadth of his musical horizons once again. The selections range from 19th-century Hawaiian standards to “Silhouettes” and “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
The opening song, “Hale‘iwa Honky Tonk,” is the most elaborate. Pahinui rocks Hawaiian-country style with Bertosa (bass), James Ganeko (drums) and Byron Lai (electric guitar). Most of the others are presented either as solo performances or with a second musician; Jake Shimabukuro adds an exquisite ukulele solo on “Sanoe,” and Shoji Ledward plays guitar on “The Christmas Song” and ukulele on “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”
Pahinui’s imaginative arrangements of his non-Hawaiian selections make each one memorable. “Jingle Bells” has been done to death for decades, but he revitalizes it with an arrangement that suggests the horse is walking rather than trotting.
With “Silhouettes,” first a hit for The Rays in 1957, he honors the intent of the original hit but also personalizes it. Pahinui’s distinctive, well-worn voice makes his rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star” another highlight in a superb collection.
Pahinui and Bertosa support the musical experience with photos and informative annotation that includes some advice the former received from his father: “Be you, not me.”
Gabby would certainly be proud of what James Daniel has done with “Bla.”
pahinuik001@hawaii.rr.com
"Hale’iwa Honky Tonk"
