GAA's Genial Hawaiians Page

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Introduction Jim Holstein and Bob Pauole were a musical duo known as Jim and Bob, the Genial Hawaiians. They performed on the radio in Chicago and made a handful of impressive recordings that were released in the 1930's. Bob Pauole was an exceptional steel player with great tone and phrasing. Their recordings exhibit a nice interplay between the two musicians. Bob Brozman's book, The History and Artistry of National Resonator Instruments, has a short essay about them. On this page I've collected nearly everything known about the duo as of 2007. Les Cook of Grass Skirt Records provided the newspaper clippings, WENR brochure and US census information. Until recently little was known about them except for the information collected on this webpage.

Photographs

There seem to be only two pictures of Jim and Bob in circulation. In one picture (above), Jim is holding an acoustic guitar and is standing over a seated Bob. The other picture (left) appears in the Brozman book and Stacy Phillip's The Complete Dobro Player book. It is similarly posed with Jim holding a Harp-Guitar.

In addition, there is one picture of Jim Holstein (left). It is from the 1930 National Guitar catalog. Jim is holding a National Tricone guitar. It was probably taken at the same time as the picture at the top of this page. The background and bench are the same in both pictures. In the National Guitar catalog Jim is described as being part of the "Jim and Bud" team on WENR, but that is most likely an error since other sources (see Newspapers below) indicate that Jim was always teamed with Bob.

 

Recordings

The discography information in this section is primarily from the Online Discographical Project.

All the Genial Hawaiians releases come from one recording session. It was in Chicago on December 12, 1933. From that session twelve sides were released on the Bluebird record label.

Two of the Bluebird releases were also released on the Montgomery Ward label (MW). The six instrumental recordings were also issued in Japan on the Japanese Victor label (JA and JR).

The table below lists all of their releases along with information about modern reissues and links to audio samples.

Record	Side	Song	Matrix	Reissued On (see legend below)	Audio Sample	Also released as	Comments
BB-5294	A	Rome Wasn't Built in a Day	77327-1	WIGEFM	short clip		vocal
	B	Coffee in the Morning, Kisses in the Night	77323	FHTH, WIGEFM			vocal
BB-5295	A	Taps (Good Night)	77325-1	WIGEFM		MW-4476 A, JA-1276 A
	B	Chimes	77324-1	HB, IHIH, WIGEFM	Amazon, eMusic,	MW-4476 B, JR-70 A	also known as "Maui Chimes"
BB-5316	A	The Song of the Range	77332-1	CSG, HSGC, HB, IHIH	Amazon, eMusic,	MW-4424 A, JR-70 B
	B	St Louis Blues	77329-1	CSG, HSGC	CDUniverse	MW-4424 B, JA-1276 B
BB-5407	A	Hula Blues	77331-1	VHM, IHIH	Amazon, eMusic,		vocal
	B	Aloma	77328-1		short clip		vocal
BB-5944	A	By the Waters of the Minnetoka	77333-1	CSG, IHIH, ROTW	Amazon, eMusic	JR-35 A
	B	Sweet Georgia Brown	77326-1	ROTW	short clip	JR-35 B	guitar & ukulele instrumental
BB-6056	A	There's a Little Grey Mother Dreaming	77334-1		short clip		vocal
	B	Calling Aloha To Me	77330-1				vocal

Reissues:

CSG	Classic Slide Guitar (Out of print)
FHTH	From Honolulu to Hollywood, also known as Honolulu to Hollywood (Out of print)
HB	Hula Blues
HSGC	Hawaiian Steel Guitar Classics, also available on iTunes
IHIH	It's Hotter in Hawaii
ROTW	Rhythm of the Waves (Out of print)
VHM	Vintage Hawaiian Music: Steel Guitar Masters
WIGEFM	Waikiki is Good Enough For Me (Out of print)

Notes:

• Except for the guitar/ukulele instrumental, all of the Jim and Bob tunes feature Bob on National Tricone steel guitar and Jim on guitar. Jim sings lead on the vocal tunes. Jim appeared in the National Guitar catalog holding a National Tricone, but on these recordings it sounds to me as if Jim is playing a conventional wood-bodied guitar. (I could be wrong!)

• In my opinion the tunes that really stand out are "St. Louis Blues", "The Song of the Range" and "By the Waters of the Minnetoka". The short audio samples don't really do them justice. You can buy those tunes by going to iTunes and Amazon.com MP3 downloads, so for $3 you can own the "Best of Jim and Bob".

• The Matrix numbers reveal a lot. The numbers are consecutive from 77323 to 77334. The only other recording on 12/12/33 are matrix numbers 77319 to 77322. Those are recordings by The Three Little Maids and were released as BB-5336 and BB-5860. Matrix number 77335 is a recording by Wendell Hall on 12/13/33, released as BB-5291. Hence, Jim and Bob only recorded twelve tunes that day. All were released. It appears that they did everything in one take.

• The first four records were release in 1934. The last two were released as much as a year or two later. The Japanese Victor records were released between 1935 and 1939.

• The six vocals are all contemporary tunes. "Aloma" is from a 1925 Broadway show Aloma of the South Seas. "Calling Aloha to Me" was written by prolific Tin Pan Alley composer Egbert Van Alstyne. These two tunes are examples of an "exotic" Hawaiian theme that was often found in the popular music of this time.

  "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" and "Coffee in the Morning" were both written in 1933 by Depression-era songwriters Al Dubin and Harry Warren. "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" appeared in the film Roman Scandals, which premired in December 1933. "Coffee in the Morning" appeared in the 1934 film Moulin Rouge.

  "Hula Blues" is the Johnny Noble happa-haole classic from 1920.

• Three of the releases haven't been reissued on any commercial CD: "Aloma", "There's a Little Grey Mother Dreaming" and "Calling Aloha To Me". In my opinion these are the weaker recordings. The arrangements are pretty similar - a long instrumental introduction followed by the vocal verses.

• It's a shame that "Sweet Georgia Brown" is not widely available as it contains some impressive ukulele playing.
• There are two Bluebird sides, BB-5304 A/B, which the Online Discographical Project attributes to Jim and Bob. They are solo guitar pieces with no steel guitar recorded on December 4, 1933 and released under the name Harold Maus. Take a listen to Guitar Medley, mx77183-1. The playing style is very different than Jim Holstein's playing on the Jim and Bob tracks. It is unlikely that it is Jim and Bob.

 

Tablature

Their more interesting tunes have been tabbed out by Stacy Phillips and appear in some of his instructional books.

Song	Tab Appears In
Hula Blues	The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar
By the Waters of the Minnetonka	The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, Volume 2
Song of the Range	The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, Volume 2 and The Dobro Book
St Louis Blues	The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, Volume 2 and The Complete Dobro Player

 

Jim and Bob on the Radio

Below are a couple of clips from the radio listings in some Chicago area papers. Originally they performed on WENR. Jim and Bob were the staff guitarists at WENR and appear in a brochure from this period (Click here for images from the brochure). By 1934 they moved to WBBM. I could find no reference to them after 1934.

Decatur Review April 9, 1931	Chicago Tribune March 19,1934

Jim and Bob in the Newspapers

To the left is an the article, discovered by collector/discographer Malcolm Rockwell, from the Honolulu Advertiser dated Sept 27, 1928. It contains quite a number of details about Jim and Bob that help fill some of the gaps in their story. Click on the image to read the article. The photo is not very clear but from the shape and size of his guitar, it almost looks as if Jim is playing a National Tricone. Jim and Bob's names also appear in a number of short "publicity" items in Chicago area papers in the early 1930's. Click here for some samples. In the newspaper clips and radio listings they are always referred to as "Jim and Bob" and never as "The Genial Hawaiians". It makes me suspect that the Genial Hawaiians tag might have been something that was created just for their records.

Jim and Bob in the 1930 US Census

Up until 1930 the US census records listed every household and included information about each household member's age, occupation, birthplace and parents' birthplaces. Not everyone appears in the US census records, but when they do it provides a lot of information. Jim and Bob both show up as living in Chicago in the 1930 census. Jim is married with a step-son. His age is 31. He and his parents' birthplaces are listed as Hawaii. His occupation is radio artist. Bob is single, age 28, and rooming in a house. His parents' birthplace is Hawaii. His birthplace is listed as California, which contradicts information in the newspaper articles. His occupation is radio singer/musician.

 

Jim and Bob on eBay

Something that shows up on eBay quite often is sheet music for "Aloha Oe" with Jim and Bob on the cover. I bought a copy for $5. The image at the top of this page was taken from the sheet music. I scanned the cover, resized it, printed it on 8-1/2 x 11 paper, framed it and hung it on my living room wall. You can do the same thing! To download a 150 DPI image, right click on the image below and do a "Save Link Target".

Some observations:

• The caption under the picture is "Featured by Jim and Bob Over Columbia Chain". The Columbia Chain was an early radio network also known as CBS. WBBM was the CBS Chicago affiliate.
• The sheet music has an unusual spelling of Queen Liliuokalani's name. Doing an eBay search for "liluokalni" will often turn up this sheet music.
• The sheet music has a piano arrangement in Eb. The Hawaiian Guitar arrangement is in A for the Low A tuning.
• The sheet music credits the Hawaiian Guitar arrangement to Bob Kaai, which is probably why some sources speculate that Bob's last name may have been Kaai. In Lorene Ruymar's book, The Hawaiian Steel Guitar and Its Great Hawaiian Musicians, Bob's name is listed as Bob Paoli.
• Calumet Music published sheet music starting from the mid-30's until about 1940. The sheet music usually included ukulele chords and a Hawaiian guitar arrangement. The cover often had a picture of a recording or radio performer.
• This sheet music has a 1940 copyright. Calumet Music released the same sheet music with different covers. Below is version with Tommy Dorsey's picture in place of Jim and Bob's and version with a 1935 copyright that has the same Jim and Bob picture but a different cover design.

     

 

Feel free to contact me if you have any comments. Visit my home page for some pages on related subjects.

Updates:
03/27/06 - Initial version
05/05/06 - Added newspaper clippings and WENR brochure
05/09/06 - Added US Census information
02/25/07 - Added Harp-Guitar picture, Revised links to audio samples. Included information about Japanese releases.
02/25/07 - Added image 1935 version of sheet music.
12/01/07 - Included additional information about Harold Maus and Harold & Hazel.
12/07/07 - Added note about availability of iTunes and MP3 downloads