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This year is the 85th anniversary of the first broadcast of the radio show “Hawaii Calls.”
“Hawaii Calls” broadcast to over 750 radio stations worldwide at its peak. It was like an audio postcard that beckoned listeners to our shores.
About 30,000 visitors came to Hawaii annually when it began. Forty years later, when it concluded, 500,000 were coming.
Webley Edwards was the creator of “Hawaii Calls.” Edwards was born in Corvallis, Ore., in 1902. “When I was in high school, our next-door neighbor was a Tahitian who made ukuleles as a hobby. He gave one to me and taught me how to play it,” he said.
“When I went to ROTC at Fort Lewis, I met the gang from the University of Hawaii. It wasn’t long before I was invited to join their Hawaii chorus. I made up my mind then where I wanted to live.”
Edwards was a quarterback at Oregon State College. G.W. (Scotty) Schuman saw him play and invited him to come to Honolulu and play football on the Town Team on weekends and sell automobiles during the week.
Scotty Schuman was the son of the founder of Schuman Carriage. Gustave Schuman came to Hawaii from Germany in 1884 with one penny in his pocket. He got a job as a harness maker for the Hawaiian Carriage Manufacturing Co., and four years later he went into business for himself.
After a short stint at Schuman Carriage, Webley Edwards found he wasn’t good with cars, but, because he had run the radio station at college, he walked into KGU, which was then the only station in Honolulu, and got a job as an announcer.
In 1934, Edwards was visiting San Francisco with radio executive Mel Venter and heard musicians there playing Hawaiian music … badly.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a program of real Hawaiian music by real Hawaiians every week?” he said to Venter.
“Like a halfback, I saw daylight. I told them I would do it.” CBS gave him a two-week trial run.
“Hawaii Calls” broadcast for the first time on July 3, 1935, from beneath the banyan tree at the Moana Hotel. Two California stations repeated the shortwave broadcast.
Where did the name “Hawaii Calls” come from? A “call” is a shortwave radio term for the transmission that preceded a broadcast, Edwards explained. The “call” reassured the network that the show was about to begin and that it was actually going to come through.
“After our first programs, people wrote that they could hear the waves at Waikiki on the show,” Edwards mused. “What they heard was the alternating characteristics of shortwave, which sounded like waves. But we caught on real fast and worked out a way they could hear the real ocean waves.”
A microphone at the shore picked up the sound of waves lapping on the shore, if there were some that day. If not, a recording was used.
“The people of Hawaii bid you welcome,” Edwards would say with the sounds of the sea in the background.
Edwards regularly gave Waikiki air and water temperatures, but stopped when he felt it might be bothering those in subzero climes. Instead, they sent thousands of letters asking it be reinstated.
Listeners around the world, in the years before television, felt the show was their connection to paradise.
Every major Hawaiian performer who specialized in Hawaiian music performed on the show, Edwards said.
“We picked musicians like you pick an all-star football team,” he said. “We have a hard-core group, a nucleus and invite guest stars. We have an alumni of about 300 singers and musicians. We rehearse every Thursday. We rehearse the show to make it sound unrehearsed, if you know what I mean.”
The Banyan Court of the Moana Hotel was the first home for the program, which alternated between the Hawaiian Village, Ilikai, Reef and Moana hotels. Edwards said the “Hawaii Calls” library contains the greatest collection of Hawaiian music in the world. Over 20 record albums were released.
During World War II, tourists stopped coming, and his sponsor, the Tourist Bureau, closed. Voluntary contributions kept “Hawaii Calls” going.
It was seen as a morale builder, and interviews with men and women of the armed forces were incorporated into it.
The military was concerned, though, that someone might accidentally, or purposely, let an important secret slip. Their solution? An armed censor with a .45 was placed at the microphone switch for several months.
After the war, things slowly returned to normal.
Rene Berthiaume remembers listening to the broadcast from the beach. “When I was still a teenager around 1963, we would go to the Moana Hotel on Saturday nights and hang out on the rock wall on the beach side of the Banyan Court where we would listen to and enjoy ‘Hawaii Calls.’
“As I remember, our vantage point was just as good as any, as we were just a few feet away, with no obstructions. At every show, Webley would acknowledge us and have the hula dancers face our way and do a number for us.
“It was such a thrill,” Berthiaume said, “and I have always admired him and been grateful to Webley for that kind gesture.”
Why was the show so successful? Edwards was often asked. “For one reason or another, people all over the world want Hawaiian music played by Hawaiians from Hawaii,” was his reply.
Besides its powerful lure for tourists, “Hawaii Calls” also made many Hawaiian singers and their songs world famous. “Sweet Leilani,” “Beyond the Reef,” “Lovely Hula Hands,” “Quiet Village” and “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” are just a few of the songs that “Hawaii Calls” brought to a worldwide audience.
Webley Edwards suffered a stroke an 1972 and retired from the show. He died in 1974, and his ashes were scattered in the waters off Waikiki, not far from the banyan tree at the Moana.
“Hawaii Calls” continued until 1975 when it broadcast for the last time, ending a 40-year run. It changed forever how the world saw Hawaii and its music.
The Rearview Mirror Insider is Bob Sigall’s now twice-weekly free email newsletter that gives readers behind-the-scenes background, stories that wouldn’t fit in the column, and lots of interesting details. He invites you to join in and be an Insider at rearviewmirrorinsider.com. Mahalo!
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