Michael "Mickey" Goldsen, founder and chief executive officer of Criterion Music Corp, the California-based publishing company that represents a long list of Hawaiian-music songwriters, died Oct. 19 at his home in Encino, Calif. He was 99.

Harry B. Soria Jr., host of the long-running "Territorial Airwaves" radio show and an expert in the history of 20th-century hapa-haole music, remembered Goldsen as "a tireless entrepreneur with a real love for Hawaii, its people and their music."

"He was my guest on the ‘Territorial Airwaves’ radio program back in the 1980s," Soria said. "I was amazed at how large his published library was and how so many Hawaiian composers of the 1950s published their music with him."

Criterion’s Hawaiian and hapa-haole catalog includes compositions by Irmgard Farden Aluli, R. Alex Anderson, Andy Cummings, Bina Mossman, Bob Nelson and Vickie Ii Rodrigues.

It also includes "Tiny Bubbles" — a song that became identified with Hawaii after Don Ho was persuaded to record it in the mid-’60s.

Goldsen was already a music industry veteran when he founded Criterion as an independent music publishing company in 1950. The company’s initial holdings consisted of pop standards by composers such as Johnny Mercer and Peggy Lee. In the years that followed, it acquired the catalogs of jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, picked up many Hawaiian and Tahitian songs, then expanded into other genres to publish compositions by writers such as Lee Hazelwood, Jackson Browne, Roseanne Cash and Lyle Lovett.

For all the diversity of the catalog, the music of Hawaii was one of Goldsen’s favorite genres.

"He loved Polynesia in general. … That was where his head was at (and) where his heart was at," says Peter Burke, son of famed record producer Sonny Burke and a longtime friend of the Goldsen family.

"When Dad was with Decca in the 1950s, he recorded Hawaiian material with many artists who really weren’t that involved in Hawaiian music. Mickey Goldsen was the first go-to guy that he communicated with when he was looking for material for his artists, and Mickey provided many of the songs that he recorded."

Sonny Burke also contacted Goldsen when he was producing recording sessions with Hawaiian artists such as Alfred Apaka in the 1950s and Don Ho in the 1960s.

Soria noted that Goldsen also wrote hapa-haole tunes under the name Steve Graham.

"Mickey chose to use a pen name so his own compositions would be more readily accepted by 1950s society. ‘Steve Graham’ composed and/or collaborated on numerous hits, including Don Ho’s ‘The Lights of Home’ and Ernest Kawohionalani’s ‘I Got Hooked at a Hukilau,’" Soria said. "Many people knew the name Steve Graham, but few recognized (it as being) Mickey Goldsen."

In 2003 the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame profiled Goldsen as a "notable member" for his decades of work as a music publisher, record producer, songwriter and general advocate of Hawaiian, hapa-haole and Polynesian music.

Goldsen is survived by son Bo Goldsen, Criterion Music Corp. president; daughters Eileen Goldsen and Nancy Sheffner; seven grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.