As the band breaks into his theme song, Hawaiian Crooner Don Ho rides the spotlight in like a surfer on a 30-footer at Makaha. Except for a red lei ringing his powerful shoulders, he is either bare from the waist up or all in glistening white, from open velours shirt to tight jeans and stocking feet. In his left hand, he sometimes totes white ankle boots, in the right a snifter of Chivas Regal Scotch. With his tousled hair and sly brown eyes, he has the smirk of a beach bum who owns the passkey to every cabana on the island. Matrons rush onstage to buss him; others in the S.R.O. house palpitate like palm fronds. Don Ho, 37, is the big noise from Waikiki these days—the biggest in the history of Hawaiian show business.
$2.50 Mai Tais. In Honolulu, tourists line up for blocks for his three shows a night at Duke Kahanamoku's 700-seat club. On the mainland, he has done sellout business from the Royal Box of Manhattan's Americana Hotel to Los Angeles' Cocoanut Grove, where he holds the house record. His fans range from Lyndon Johnson's sister Rebekah Bobbitt, who attended a party welcoming him to New York, to Jacqueline Kennedy, who caught his first show at the Duke's on her visit to Hawaii last year, stayed right through to the 3 a.m. closing. * Last week the Singer Sewing Machine Co., which sponsored Herb Alpert on the No. 2-rated TV special of 1966-67, announced that this season it will go with Ho.
Don's success has little to do with his boozy baritone and self-accompaniment on the electric organ. "I am not a singer," he says, "but an entertainer with an ability to read the mood of an audience." According to Ho's reading, his fans have left their inhibitions on the mainland and want a come-on-strong virility. They don't even mind his occasional bathroom humor. There is a pidgin Hawaiian expression, "Letta go your blouse," roughly meaning "anything goes." That is Ho's approach—and appeal.
Hipper than the Hawaiian tradition of tinkling ukuleles, Ho has chucked the cloying Sweet Leilani, and only under audience pressure retreats to the Hawaiian Wedding Song. His beat ranges from big to bongo.
He does mainland standards like Coin' Out of My Head and latter-day island songs like You'll Never Find Another Kanaka [Native Boy] Like Me. Obligatory at every show is a song called Suck 'em Up, meaning "Bottoms up." When Don moans "Ah ha," the whole house raises $2.50 mai tais and belts along "Suck 'em up." "The more you drink and spend," he quips, "the more chance we get our boy. land back."