The Islanders family band: Steve Cheney playing the bass (upper right) with his (left-right) mom on the marimba, dad on guitar and grandfather on the pedal steel guitar in the early 1960s. Father-son duo maintain PCC’s steel guitar legacy By that time the musical capabilities of the steel guitar had extended well beyond Hawaiian into country-western, blues and rock genres.Ībout two years ago, as part of opening the Polynesian Cultural Center’s new Hukilau Marketplace, the PCC erected a statue of Kekuku outside the Ukulele Experience in the Mahinalani Shop. The Steel Guitar Hall of Fame inducted the “father” of the famed instrument in 1993. That was about the time musicians electrified the steel guitar, and took its popularity to new heights. He died there in 1932, having never returned to Hawaii. Returning to the U.S., he operated a popular music store in Chicago and eventually settled in New Jersey. mainland and also spent eight years playing in Europe. Over the next several decades, he and his Hawaiian band toured the U.S.
Almost 140 years later, most players now use a steel bar about three inches long to create the steel guitar’s beautiful sliding sounds. It is sometimes said he laid a guitar across his lap and moved the back of metal comb across the frets to create the first distinctive Hawaiian steel guitar sounds. Young Joseph Kekukuupenaokamehamehakanaiaupuni Apuakehau, who shortened his stage name to Kekuku, invented the steel guitar in 1885.
Joseph Kekuku, playing the Hawaiian steel guitar.
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