SOL HOOPII

Solomon Hoopii Kaaiai was born in Honolulu in 1902, the first of 21 children. He was a prodigy on stringed instruments, and picked up the ukulele and guitar before age six. Shortly thereafter, he took up the steel guitar, and was considered the best of Hawaii's masters of the instrument. He played with Johnny Noble's orchestra until he and several friends stowed away on the Matsonia in 1919 en route to San Francisco. The young men were discovered but their playing enchanted passengers and a collection was taken up to pay their fares.

With the help of a booking agent, Sol and friends got plenty of nightclub gigs and soon moved to Los Angeles. They came back to Hawaii several years later and Sol formed a trio with Lani McIntire and Glenwood Leslie and their Brunswick recordings made them famous. Hawaiian music and musicians were hot property in Hollywood then, and Sol returned to the mainland to work as a musician, actor and technical advisor. Mary Pickford used Sol and his steel guitar to get her "in the mood" for sad scenes in her films. He played and acted in Waikiki Wedding and Flirtation Walk as well as a number of Charlie Chan films. Sol also worked on Sing Me a Song of the Islands and was kept busy at night appearing in every Los Angeles Polynesian-themed nightclub.

Sol became an evangelist later in his life and it was when he was on tour in 1953 in Seattle Washington that he passed away from diabetes. He is still renowned for expanding the horizons of the steel guitar and his innovations are still in use today.


Biographical material from Tony Todaro, The Golden Years of Hawaiian Entertainment (Tony Todaro Pub., 1974).