Hall Of Mirrors

When it was first released in 1974, Hula Blues was the first album-length compilation ever of Hawaiian instrumental steel guitar music recorded in the 1930s and 1940s. It was reissued on CD by Rounder in 2000, by which time it was a rather less impressive feat since other bigger, better, and better-sounding anthologies of the style have been made available (including a few on Rounder itself). Indeed, with 16 songs, this is rather on the short side for anthologies in the CD era, and there's a lot of surface noise on some of the cuts (to be fair, that could have been unavoidable given the condition of the original discs). All that out of the way, it's a quite respectable collection of the genre, even if it isn't the most wide-ranging one assembled. Hawaiian steel guitar king Sol Hoopii is represented by five selections, the lively, jazz Farewell Blues being a highlight with its alternation of slides, titters, and witty percussive rhythms. Jim and Bob, the Genial Hawaiians (that's their name, all six words of it) get some nice harmonics out of Chimes, while Lemuel Turner doesn't sound too far from the slide guitar of southern Delta bluesmen on Jake Bottle Blues. Some of this is on the corny side, but rarely overbearingly so, and the arrangements bear testament to how close Hawaiian music was in some ways to early jazz, country, and blues -- a path of influence that most likely went both ways. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide