The Waikiki Hawaiian Orchestra with Helen Louise and Frank Ferera play \"Somewhere in Hawaii\" on Edison Blue Amberol 3575.
I give information below about the remarkable team of Helen Louise (who died mysteriously just as her career was beginning to flourish) and her husband Frank Ferera.
Their Edison recording debut, as Helen Louise and Palakiko Ferreira, was \"Medley of Hawaiian Airs--No. 1,\" issued on Blue Amberol 2917 in July 1916.
Frank Ferera introduced steel guitar and slide guitar playing to a worldwide audience, many of his recordings issued outside the United States. He had more recording sessions than any other guitarist from 1915 to 1925.
He was not the first Hawaiian guitarist to record. That was probably Joseph Kekuku, the steel guitar's reputed inventor. Credit has also been given to James Hoa and Gabriel Davion.
But Ferera was the first guitarist to enjoy success as a recording artist, his name a familiar one in the catalogs of most record companies of the World War I era and 1920s. His style of playing was a forerunner of bottleneck playing on blues records and \"steel\" playing on country records, and his popular records must have influenced many guitarists of his generation.
Hawaiian music had been recorded as early as the 1890s but was neither popular on the mainland nor influential until the World War I era. The first important records featuring authentic performances were made by the American Record Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, and New York City.
By 1904 some Hawaiian troupes were performing in mainland cities including New York, where American's Hawaiian recordings apparently were made in late 1904 or early 1905. Over two dozen performances were issued on a series of 10-5/8 inch blue single-sided \"Indian label\" discs.
Steel guitar virtuoso Frank Ferera--called Palakiko Ferreira on some of his early Edison recordings (others were credited to Palakiko's Hawaiian Orchestra)--was born on June 12, 1885, in Honolulu to Mary and Frank Ferreira. He left for the mainland around the turn of the century.
He was featured on the cover of the December 1916 issue of Edison Phonograph Monthly, in which an article states, \"Frank Ferera...has the distinction of being the one who first introduced the Hawaiian style of playing the guitar into the United States. It was in 1900 that he brought the first ukelele [sic] here and commenced to charm vaudeville audiences with the weird and plaintive effects he produced. For quite a while he had the field to himself....It is said that the Hawaiian style of playing the guitar was originated by a Portuguese sailor. Perhaps this has something to do with the tendency that Mr. Ferera had toward the ukelele for he, although of Hawaiian birth, is of Portuguese descent. He was musical even in his childhood.\"
His first wife was named Eva Perkins. After their divorce, he, married a young woman from Seattle named Helen Greenus, who played ukulele as well as guitar. The two performed widely in vaudeville as Helen Louise and Frank Ferera. When Hawaiian records became incredibly popular in 1916 and 1917, Louise and Ferera recorded prolifically, benefitting from the sudden craze for Hawaiian records but also providing fuel for the craze with their many records featuring charming, always polished but never flashy performances.
Interpretation was at times staid but their intonation was clean and accurate, which is important in steel guitar playing since performers must rely on a good sense of pitch when sliding a bar of steel along strings. Ferera's sliding glissandos punctuated by staccato melody lines were mostly played on the high melody string to achieve the greatest volume his instrument was capable of. This was typical of steel guitar players of the time. Guitarists accustomed to performing for large audiences before the days of microphones had to forfeit subtlety and delicate nuances.
More than any other artists, they supplied what the record-buying public wanted at the time in the way of Hawaiian music. Demand was not great for songs that originated in Hawaii or songs performed in an authentic Hawaiian manner. Instead, the public was excited by the novelty of steel guitar, especially in combination with ukulele. Ferera was a crossover artist from the beginning.
Louise and Ferera made their recording debut in the summer of 1915. For Columbia on July 27, in the company's New York City studio, they cut \"My Old Kentucky Home\" and \"Medley of Hawaiian Waltzes.\" The performances were unissued, but they returned within weeks to cut the numbers again, and successful takes were issued on Columbia A1814.
For Edison, Frank Ferera made his recording debut as a solo artist. Blue Amberol 2685 was issued in September 1915: \"a) Ua Like No Alike; b) Medley of Hawaiian Hulas.\" It is credited to Palakiko Ferreira. Edison literature states, \"The crying, haunting quality of Hawaiian music is the leading feature of this record.\"
