The Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band | ar

Philip Kunia Pahinui (Honolulu, Hawaii, April 22, 1921 – October 13, 1980) was a Hawaiian slack-key guitarist and singer. The Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s launched a cultural reawakening of all things Hawaiian. Gabby played a very important part in the rise of this Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance. First there were the albums recorded through the 1960s with the enormously popular and influential Sons of Hawaii, which he started with 'ukulele virtuoso Eddie Kamae: their self-titled debut album (Hula HS 503, 1961); Music of Old Hawai'i (Hula HS 506, 1964); and Folk Music of Hawai'i (Panini 1001, 1971).
Then, starting in 1972, he made four albums with what came to be called the "Gabby Band." The first album featured Gabby backed by four of his sons plus old friends Leland "Atta" Isaacs and bassist Manuel "Joe Gang" Kupahu, but the group eventually expanded to include Sonny Chillingworth, younger-generation players Peter Moon and Randy Lorenzo, and mainland admirer Ry Cooder. The albums are:

Gabby (1972; often called "Brown Gabby" or "The Brown Album" because of its sepia cover photo)
Rabbit Island Music Festival (1973)
Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band, Vol 1 (1975)
Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band, Vol 2 (1976)

At the 1st Annual Seattle Slack Key Guitar Festival, his son Cyril Pahinui related a story about how Gabby got his name. In his early career, he played steel guitar with an orchestra. The standard costume for the gig was gabardine pants—hence his name. Though a skilled player of the steel guitar (invented in Hawaii before Blues slide guitar), Gabby is most known for his mastery of traditional Hawaiian slack-key guitar (Kī Hō'alu -"key slackened"- downtuned, usually to an open-string chord with low bass notes, then finger-picked) and his beautiful, expressive vocals. Gabby learned slack-key from Herman Keawe whom Gabby acknowledges as being "the greatest slack-key player of all time." Herman, like Gabby, lived in the Kaka'ako area.
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