Cyril Pahinui — slack key master, Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning recording artist, teacher, mentor and role model — died Saturday at The Queen’s Medical Center. He had been in declining health for several years and was hospitalized in 2016. He was 68.

He died of complications from kidney and respiratory failure, his wife, Chelle Pahinui, said.

“His passing was sudden, quick,” she said by phone Sunday. “He just suddenly dropped out. He was ready.”

His wife visited him daily at the hospital, where he was connected to a respirator, and said a large group of hospital staff came to his room to say farewell. On Sunday she spoke with 300 to 400 musicians who offered their condolences via text messages, phone calls or social media.

“He was one of the most loving husbands in the world,” she said, recalling that on the day after they first met in 2006, Pahinui told her that she would be his next wife. They were married less than a year later.

Pahinui recorded more than 50 albums, including three that received Grammy Awards. He was honored with 19 Na Hoku awards and received the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

In 1997 and 2017 he received the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Ki Ho‘alu Award. He was also honored as a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow in 2017.

Born and raised in Waimanalo, Pahinui learned to play by watching his father, slack key master Charles Philip “Gabby” Pahinui, play music in the backyard with a circle of friends that included slack key guitarists Leland “Atta” Issacs and Sonny Chillingworth, and acoustic bassist Manuel “Joe Gang” Kupahu. His first instrument was the ukulele. He started playing slack key at 7 and started sitting in with the adults at age 12.

Pahinui played rock ’n’ roll with his older brother, Daniel James “Bla” Pahinui, in the mid-1960s but made his first recordings in 1968 as a member of the Sunday Manoa with Peter Moon, Palani Vaughan and Albert “Baby” Kalima.

Pahinui’s musical career was interrupted when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam.

He returned home in 1972 and joined his father, Isaacs, Kupahu and his brothers — Bla, Philip and Martin — to record the first in a series of albums recorded by what became known as the Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band.

In 1975 Pahinui formed the Sandwich Isle Band with Brian Hussey, Steve Hall and Eddie Palama, and in 1980 joined Moon’s new project, the Peter Moon Band. Pahinui remained with Moon through the group’s peak as the most influential contemporary Hawaiian group of the 1980s.

In 1988 Pahinui released his first solo album, “Cyril Pahinui,” and in 1992 he joined Bla and Martin in recording a long-awaited Pahinui Brothers album for Panini Records.

Rhonda Burk, a hula dancer and friend of Pahinui’s for 33 years, said Pahinui wanted to give back to the community, both through his performances and by teaching music to children.

She recalled being with him after a performance at a trade show at the Blaisdell Center and not being able to walk 20 feet in an hour because Pahinui would stop to talk with every person who came up to him.

“He appreciated that people wanted to talk to him,” she said.

Chelle said Pahinui would tell the children he taught music to that while he loved all music, Hawaiian music took him all over the world and that they should focus on that because it is loved around the world.

She said her husband was a beloved entertainer because of his charisma, his ability to command the audience and his “way with his guitar” that could build momentum in his show.

She recalled him saying his father had taught him to give his best during his performances no matter how small the audience because they would remember him for it.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by daughters Amber, Andrea, Anne, Carrie and Elizabeth; 19 grandchildren; brothers James “Bla” and Philip; and sisters Margaret Pahinui Puuohau and Madelyn Pahinui Coleman.

A memorial event is being planned for 2019, his wife said.