Ginny Tiu’s father always locked his piano before he went to work so that none of his seven children could “bang on it” when he was away. One day when Ginny was 3-1/2 he forgot. Tiu got her chance to play and her father became her first teacher.
Ginny was 5 when a family friend sent a home recording of her playing to Chicago radio show host Don McNeill. It was the start of a career that included appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” a movie with Elvis Presley and a performance at the White House for President John F. Kennedy. Tiu, who is on the board of the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, was in Memphis, Tenn., last month for the Elvis Week observances marking the 41st anniversary of Presley’s death.
The 64-year-old will celebrate the sixth anniversary of her weekly engagement playing piano at 53 By The Sea on Thursday.
JOHN BERGER: What do you remember about the first time you played the piano?
GINNY TIU: I was really trying to duplicate what I’d heard my dad play. My mom could tell I was serious about it, and when she told my dad he started teaching me. Anything he would play I would come back and duplicate.
JB: Did he plan for you to become an entertainer?
GT: Not at all. He was planning for me to start school until his friend sent that recording to Don McNeill, and Don arranged for my parents to bring me to Chicago to be on his show.
My parents expected we’d be there for a couple of weeks and then go home to Manila, but then Ed Sullivan heard about me and had me on his show, and then other offers kept coming. A year later my parents made arrangements for my brothers and sisters to join us in America.
JB: How did you and three of your siblings — Al, Vicky and Liz — become the musical group Ginny Tiu and Happy Little Tius?
GT: My dad started looking at who (of my brothers and sisters) wanted to join me. The older ones had stage fright, but Al was a great drummer, and then Vicky and Liz joined us.
The name was my dad’s idea. When we got older we were still happy, but we weren’t little so it became the Ginny Tiu Revue.
JB: What is your favorite memory of doing the 1962 film “Girls! Girls! Girls!” with Elvis?
GT: He was so nice, humble and soft-spoken — and he addressed my parents as “Sir” and “Ma’am.”
JB: What stands out about playing at the White House?
GT: President Kennedy was very nice. My mom wanted to take a photo of us — Al, Liz and myself — with President Kennedy, but the security wouldn’t let her get close enough.
Then I told him, “That’s my mother,” and he told them to let her in.
JB: What do you like to do that isn’t music-related?
GT: I’m a big supporter of the Hawaiian Humane Society. Animals never get to make choices and so they really need the Humane Society and people to care for them and make the right choices for them.
JB: Could there be a family reunion — maybe the Happy Big Tius with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra?
GT: It would take a lot. Vicky had a birthday, and one of her favorite groups is ABBA, and so Liz, Al, our brother Tony, and myself did a spoof of ABBA. We had so much fun, but I don’t know about doing it for the public.
