and Frank Sinatra were known to be in the audience for Ho's shows. Stars such as Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr.
Ho began to play at various spots at Hawaii, and soon, he was packing places such as the Coconut Grove in Hollywood and the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Honey's became a happening place on Oahu, with other Hawaiian musicians stopping in for jam sessions. Every weekend there would be lines down the street." "I just played songs I liked from the radio, and pretty soon that place was jammed. "I had no intention of being an entertainer," Ho said. When he returned home and took over his parents' struggling neighborhood bar, Honey's, he put together a band and started performing at his father's request. As the Korean War wound down, he piloted transport planes between Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu and Tokyo. military planes flying in and out of Hawaii during World War II, Ho joined the Air Force. He grew homesick, returned to the islands and ended up graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1953 with a degree in sociology. 13, 1930, in Honolulu and grew up in the then-rural countryside of Kaneohe.Īfter graduating high school in 1949, he attended Springfield College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. "Hawaii is my partner," Ho told The Associated Press in 2004.ĭonald Tai Loy Ho, who was Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and German, was born Aug.
Few artists are more associated with one place. The son of bar owners, Ho broke into the Waikiki entertainment scene in the early 1960s and, except for short periods, never left. He said he performed it twice because "people my age can't remember if we did it or not." "I hate that song," he often joked to the crowd. Shows usually started and ended with the same song, "Tiny Bubbles." Ho mostly hummed the song's swaying melody as the audience enthusiastically took over the familiar lyrics: "Tiny bubbles/in the wine/make me happy/make me feel fine."
For many, no trip to Hawaii was complete without seeing his Waikiki show.
Ho entertained Hollywood's biggest stars and thousands of tourists for four decades. In 2005, he underwent an experimental stem cell procedure on his ailing heart in Thailand in 2005. Ho had suffered with heart problems for the past several years, and had a pacemaker installed last fall. He died Saturday morning of heart failure, publicist Donna Jung said. HONOLULU - Legendary crooner Don Ho, who entertained tourists for decades wearing raspberry-tinted sunglasses and singing the catchy signature tune "Tiny Bubbles," has died.
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