Borges is betting on the future

Kanikapila is a way of life in these islands, as family and friends pull out their guitars and ukulele and sing together in backyard sessions.

Jazz singer Jimmy Borges is hoping to give young singers a chance to be heard on a broader stage, through a vocal music scholarship at the University of Hawaii.

“We have such wonderful talent in Hawaii,” said Borges. “I really want to give local high school graduates the opportunity to go to university to learn technically about music and what to do with it, not just sing at home.”

Fellow entertainers are coming together in a big way to make it happen for the 80-year-old vocalist, with a musical tribute concert and dinner Jan. 30 at the Moana Surfrider to raise funds for the scholarship.

On tap to perform are Lucie Arnaz, Willie K, Yvonne Elliman, Melveen Leed, Taimane Gardner and Betty Loo Taylor — just a sampling of the friends the magnetic singer has attracted over the years. The entertainers are donating their talents for the event, entitled “For the Love of Jimmy.”

All proceeds will go to the Jimmy Borges Endowed Scholarship in Vocal Music, a need-based award at the UH Foundation to help Hawaii’s homegrown talent get launched on the big stage.

Borges, who grew up in Kalihi playing ball in hand-me-down cleats, made his way to San Francisco State College on a football scholarship but shifted gears at age 20 when he discovered people would pay to hear him sing.

“When the opportunity came I grabbed it,” he said in an interview. “I didn’t wait for it to go by and say, ‘Gee, I wish I had done that.’

“I’ve never thought of music as a job, because it was such a passionate thing, it was an emotional thing for me. Every moment that I was singing, I was living the dream that was in my heart.”

Borges beat back liver cancer a few years ago, but the disease recently resurfaced in the lungs that have carried him through 60 years in show business. He is expected to take the stage for one number at the concert.

Cha Thompson, CEO of Tihati Productions, is teaming up with another “Kalihi boy” — Victor Kimura, senior vice president of Kyo-ya Management Co. — to stage the gala.

Thompson was 18 when she first met Borges, back in the 1960s when he was singing at a club in San Francisco and she was performing with a Polynesian group. They discovered they both were from Hawaii — and not just Hawaii, but hardscrabble Kalihi. A lifelong bond was formed.

“He was this beautiful, drop-dead handsome young singer,” Thompson recalled. “We have remained very, very close friends. We even served as police commissioners together. I adore him and I adore his wife.”

Lining up performers for the Borges concert turned out to be easy.

“As soon as I heard they were doing something like this, I said, ‘I’m there,’” said Arnaz, who first encountered Borges in her 20s while she was in Hawaii to tape TV shows with Don Ho. She headed down to Trappers club, where Borges held court for years.

“I went and saw Jimmy, and he was really just an inspiration to me,” said Arnaz, an entertainer with a natural-born eye for talent, as the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. “We have stayed friends forever.”

“He has a beautiful voice, but there are a lot of beautiful voices that are not very entertaining because they don’t reach inside your heart and grab it,” she added. “Jimmy knows what he’s singing about.”

Leed, the Hawaii diva, counts Borges as a mentor as well.

“I studied with him and I sang with him,” she said. “I learned a lot from him, spontaneously. He never even realized he’s been tutoring a lot of us, without him knowing, mentoring us.”

Borges is credited with helping keep jazz and the great American songbook alive in Honolulu, putting his own jazzy stamp on classic standards.

Frank Sinatra granted him free and complete access to his archive of musical arrangements after reportedly sending a scout to Honolulu to make sure the Hawaii singer was worthy. Borges was the only artist to receive such permission.

He has always stepped up to help whenever people were organizing a benefit concert.

“Jimmy is a stand-up guy,” Thompson said. “There isn’t anybody that he has not helped.”

Now it’s his turn to be honored. The Borges scholarship endowment has already reached $300,000, after an invitation-only concert for donors at PBS Hawaii that is due to air at 8 p.m. Thursday titled “Jimmy Borges: Faced It All.”

Thompson projects that the Jan. 30 event will bring in at least $50,000 more. Gold and Platinum tables for 10 are being sold at $2,500 and $5,000 apiece. There are no individual ticket sales.

“People are buying tables like crazy,” Thompson said. “Because everybody loves Jimmy so much, everybody came together.”

Borges is heartened to think of what the scholarship might mean to struggling youngsters in Hawaii.

“It’s wonderful to think in my mind right now that maybe 20 years from now there is going to be some kid at the Met and he’s going to be singing something, and somebody’s going to come up to him and ask him, ‘Where did you study?’” Borges said. “And he’s going to say, ‘I studied at University of Hawaii with the Jimmy Borges music scholarship.’”

“That’s what the scholarship is about — it’s for the future of our young children,” he said. “That spurs me on every day.”