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Harry Owens

b. 1902, Nebraska, USA, d. 11 Dec 1986, Eugene, Oregon, USA. Before developing his very own dance music group Owens performed trumpet in a number of Los Angeles region orchestras, including those of Vincent Rose as well as the Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. When he set up his very own combo in 1926 to try out at the neighborhood Lafayette Cafe, it had been a typical dance music group that gave small sign of his potential direction. The modification came into being when he travelled to Honolulu in 1934 to fulfil a four-month agreement because the musical movie director from the Royal Hawaiian Resort. The orchestra he pieced jointly here took indigenous Hawaiian music as its theme, merging this with a far more traditional dance music group sound. The music artists who contributed had been primarily local guys, tutored within the big music group powerful by Owens himself. Different vocalists had been also utilized, including Hilo Hattie, the Royal Hawaiian Sweethearts, Kenny Allen and Gil Mershon. Tracks such as for example ‘Hawaiian Heaven’, ‘To You, Sweetheart, Aloha’, ‘Tone of voice FROM THE Trade Winds’ and ‘Polynesian Vacation’, plus theme melody ‘Special Leilani’, readily determined the group’s audio. These as well as other tracks had been released on recordings by Hamilton, Columbia Information, Capitol Information and Decca Information, which proved especially favored by American viewers who idealised the isle’s sunlight swept seashores but were not able to cover the airfare. Owens remained on the Royal Hawaiian for seven years, along with his organic musicians gradually getting even more adept at that which was essentially an alien design of playing. Throughout he produced brief returns towards the American mainland, playing Californian locations like the St. Francis and Beverly Wilshire Resorts, also appearing in a number of films. Nevertheless, the development of World Battle II, and much more specially the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, precluded his go back to the isle for quite some time. Owens continuing to focus on the western coast nevertheless, and in 1949 organised an effective CBS tv program that went for nine years. When he retired from music he founded a Hawaiian tour company in Santa Monica, before shifting to Eugene, Oregon, in 1976.

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