Slack-key guitar virtuoso Gabby Pahinui once said: "I don't read music ... I just play how I feel." His legions of fans didn't care if he knew how to read the "golf clubs," as he dubbed written musical notes, because whenever Pahinui played, it always felt good.
Born Charles Kapono Kahahawai Jr. in Lahaina in 1921 to lei sellers, he was adopted at age 6 in Hawaiian hanai fashion by the Pahinui family and grew up dirt-poor in Kaka'ako. He got the nickname "Gabby" because his kinky hair inspired friends to liken it to gabardine fabric.
He dropped out of school at a young age and at his hanai father's urging, tried being a stevedore but didn't like it. He sold newspapers and shined shoes until he discovered he could sell his skills on the guitar, which he had learned to play by watching others. By the time he was 13, Pahinui was playing in clubs and in demand.
But he never quite made it during the early years and his life took the road of the common man: hard work, marriage, 13 children and finally a house in Waimanalo on Hawaiian homestead land. For years, Pahinui drove a refuse truck for the city, and music was a part-time career that nonetheless made him a pied piper to huge, adoring crowds.
Pahinui's early musical interests were in jazz, but in 1955 he became synonymous with slack-key style of guitar, which requires a musician to use some strings for the melody and loosen others for the accompaniment. His listeners were mostly local, rather than tourists, and Pahinui was a bona-fide folk hero to his style.
He brought to his music a voice that was at once raspy, guttural and falsetto — an instrument, one reviewer said, "that knows pain, sorrow and pleasure."
Among his best-known favorites was the song "Hi'ilawe," an earthy Hawaiian tune he first heard sung by a woman from Ni'ihau when he was a teenager. It was the first of his 25 recordings, done on a 78 rpm platter in 1946.
In the 1950s and '60s, Pahinui played on the popular radio program "Hawai'i Calls" and was an original member of Eddie Kamae's Sons of Hawai'i. During the 1970s, amid a growing and widespread revival of Hawaiian culture, Pahinui and his music reached its zenith. His absolute mastery of the slack-key style inspired a generation of young musicians and fans.
Pahinui suffered a fatal stroke in October 1980 while playing golf in Kahuku. He was 59.
