Hawaii as a holiday destination (whether real for many American or imagined for most Europeans in the fifties and early sixties) offered a number of images, the most popular of which was the grass-skirted hula-dancer.

Those lucky enough to experience Hawaii for real were offered any number of "authentic" Hawaiian music collections as souvenirs. For those not so lucky, record labels offered home-grown Hawaiian music - some of it from authentic sources, much of it recorded in studios nearer to home.

Whatever the source, barring a few sleeves with leaping porpoises on, the dusky Hawaiian maiden provided the lure for buyers. Judging by the huge number of such albums which turn up it was a sales gimmick which worked remarkably well.

Blue Hawaiian Waters / Harry Kaapuni
Coronet CX 128 : USA : 1960

Design : Sam Suliman. A remarkably well designed sleeve despite being for a budget label. Difficult to tell if was taken in Hawaii or not but the music appears to be authentic.

Tahiti Dances / Eddie Lund
Tahiti Records TR 201 : USA : 195-

Photographer : unknown The back cover photos were taken in Tahiti (and credited) but one suspects the cover - which is very daring for the fifties (the garland is all she's wearing on top) and recalls the sort of image used by "art" magazines of the time - was taken back in America where this record was pressed by Decca.

Blue Hawaii / Frans van Oirschot
Emerald Green GES 1104 : Ireland : 1974

Designer : unknown. Even further away from Hawaii, an album pressed in the UK for sale in Ireland by Decca (the music appears to recycle old recordings). The cover picture was probably taken in a London studio but features all the props one associates with the island albeit on a Western model.

Hawaiian Moonlight / Lani McIntire
Hallmark HM 539 : UK : 1966

Designer : unknown. As Lani had been playing Hawaiian music for 25 years when this was issued, one suspects an old tapes brought up to date by a sixties cover model. Hallmark was Pickwick's budget label better remembered for the Top Of The Pops album series.

Hawaiian Guitar / Stars Of Hawaii
RCA RD 27029 : UK: 1960?

Photographer : Wendy Hilty. A UK release of a 1957 US original (which accounts for the primitive colour separation), with a very Western looking model posing on the cover, posed in a studio and surrounded by pot plants.

Hawaii / The Tahitis
Realm RM 137 : UK : 1963

Photographer : unknown. A somewhat startled looking model dressed in the latest sixities one piece bathing suit, perched precariously on a tree branch while evoking a "mood of sun drenched romanticism" according to the sleeve notes! More old recordings this time recycled by Realm, an off shoot of Oriole Records in New Bond Street.

Click on the sleeves for a larger image.

ALBUMS