Vocalist was a terrific friend as well as an A-list entertainer

This is tough to write.

Jimmy Borges, who died of cancer Monday, was one of my best friends and one of the nicest guys I ever met in show business.

In a February phone conversation, he said he had two hospice nurses in the apartment to assist him and that his wife, Vicki Bergeron Borges, and daughter, Steffanie Borges-Juergenson, and her husband, Randy Juergenson, were there when the nurses were not. He said he had breathing problems and chills, and added that his meds made him dizzy. I was worried and called him again two days later, hoping to take him and his family to the Halekulani’s House Without a Key for the glorious sunset with a tight group that he knows well. Vicki called back for Jimmy that eve, first time he had not personally returned a call to me. She thanked me but said he was not up to making a sunset session.

Vicki said she last talked to her husband Monday morning. “I know he heard me because he pursed his lips and gave me a kiss,” she said. He died at home in the arms of his family.

Though he wasn’t able to watch much of the the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards, when he was told of his win Saturday night, he was pleased and said, “Oh! Album of the Year!” before falling back to sleep. He swept all four categories in which he was nominated.

Though Jimmy and I had weekly phone conversations, the last time he called was April 4, but I was not home. He left a message to say goodbye and to thank me for covering his career for more than 45 years. “I wanted to thank you for everything since you discovered me in 1968,” he said in a raspy voice. “I wanted to thank you for your aloha, your kindness and your generosity. You have been my champion. I just wanted to talk to you to say hello and thank you from the bottom of my heart. I do love you. Take care, aloha.”

His emotional message hit hard. The first thing I thought was that the end was near for my dear friend and that I should be thanking him for giving me so many years of wonderful friendship and musical enjoyment — not him thanking me. In the message he said there was no need to call him back, but I did the next day. Vicki took my call and said he was sleeping and that she was with him full time and helping him make farewell calls. I asked her to tell him that he was the nicest entertainer I have ever covered and that I loved him like a brother.

Looking back: In 1968, when I was Star-Bulletin entertainment editor, an Associated Press photo of a singer to perform on the Jonathan Winters TV show came to my desk. The caption revealed that the singer was from Hawaii and his name: Jimmy Borges. “Jimmy who?” I thought. I had never heard of him, so I wrote AP asking them for his contact info. I contacted Jimmy, and he said he and his parents moved to the Bay Area when he was a youngster of 12 attending Saint Louis School. So I wrote a story introducing him to islanders.

We met two years later when he came back to Hawaii. He started singing at Knight’s Palace in Kalihi, not far from his boyhood home. A sharp dresser from San Francisco, Jimmy, whose idol was Frank Sinatra, wore a three-piece tweed suit and an ascot around his neck in his first shows, not exactly the attire you wear in a Kalihi nitery. This prompted Danny Kaleikini to help him out and let the part-Hawaiian singer know that a Kalihi spot was not a three-piece suit and ascot area.

Eventually Jimmy moved on to be a big draw at Keone’s and Trappers, both in Waikiki. Stars flocked to see Jimmy and the Betty Loo Taylor Trio. For example, one night when I was at Trappers, trumpet player and bandleader Wynton Marsalis, who was on his way to becoming legendary, and his group showed up. During those Waikiki years Jimmy and I became great friends.

We played golf together, and he made a point of playing in my golf tournaments. He also was at all my birthday parties, big or small, right up to last October when my tight group threw me an 84th-birthday party. He sang along on “Happy Birthday.” He usually sang some numbers and emceed at my parties. He often sang a song on which he changed the lyrics to make it pertain to me — such as changing the title of “When You’re Young at Heart,” making it “When You’re Young as Ben.”

He also sang for me at ceremonies when I received my Hoku Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He and the fabulous Melveen Leed, 72, whom I started covering when she was about 20, sang at my 83rd-birthday party. Jimmy and Melveen will go down in history as two of Hawaii’s greatest entertainers. What’s more, they both had a good number of guest appearances on Jack Lord’s “Hawaii Five-O.”

Jimmy met her when she visited San Francisco in the late 1960s. Melveen, in April, had high praise for Jimmy: “He was my mentor. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be as deep in jazz as I am today. He taught me phrasing and how to interact with the audience and especially the band.”

“I’m not chasing life, I’m living life,” said Jimmy in January, a year after learning his cancer was untreatable. And what a year he had. He worked on and released a fine album, “Jimmy Borges,” headlined a pops concert, performed in a spectacular private concert in the Hawaii Public Broadcasting Studio for major contributors to the Jimmy Borges Memorial Scholarship that was being established, appeared in a “Hawaii Five-0” episode and received UH basketball jersey No. 1 at a game for singing the national anthem for 40 years to open the Rainbow Classic basketball tournament.

Jimmy said his idol Sinatra, who allowed him to use his precious musical arrangements, believed that songs sung should tell a story. The words and and music by Jimmy at the PBS studio concert were emotional and informative enough to form the basis for a book. … Aloha, Jimmy …

Ben Wood, who sold newspapers on Honolulu streets in World War II, writes of people, places and things. Email him at bwood@staradvertiser.com.