Rearview: Unpredictable Aku conjures up ‘A Day in the Life of a Fish-head’

When I started listening to KSSK radio in the early 1970s, Hal Lewis, aka J. Akuhead Pupule, its morning deejay, was a real character.

The rumor was that he was the highest-paid deejay in America, which the Associated Press confirmed. In 1970 Aku signed a 12-year contract with an annual salary of $400,000 ($2.7 million today).

My favorite musical groups were the Beatles; Beach Boys; Crosby, Stills & Nash; and Moody Blues. Aku hated rock ’n’ roll. He played the Andrews Sisters, Mills Brothers, classical or big-band music!

Aku believed radio stations and record companies were “leading the kids down the primrose paths of mediocrity” and that modern recording artists lacked the discipline and craftsmanship of musicians from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.

While I was mystified by his choice in music, I thought his April Fools stunts were legendary. I also liked the “Coconut Wireless” news and Aku’s banter with listeners.

“Hello dere,” he would say, and he’d chat with callers about all kinds of things. He’d call up world leaders on the air, usually not getting through, but what audacity, I thought. I remember one time he called Fidel Castro in Cuba, offering to accept his resignation.

Recently, I found out Aku had a Sunday night television show in 1954 and even wrote a weekly column in The Honolulu Advertiser in 1955.

Aku TV

The “J. Akuhead Pupule Time” TV show premiered at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28, 1954, on KONA TV — now KHON. His guest that night was Alfred Apaka.

On the other channel – yes, there were only two — KGMB offered the “Jackie Gleason Show.” KULA TV (now KITV) didn’t begin broadcasting until April of that year.

KONA called it the “most discussed premiere in local television history” and promised a “fast-moving hour of entertainment.”

Aku played the part of a theatrical agent looking for talent. This allowed him to host mainland and local entertainers and have them perform. He also told jokes and played violin.

All the advertising sold out four days after the show was announced. Everyone thought they had a smash hit on their hands.

Aku’s 1954 variety show was probably the most ambitious local TV show ever attempted in Hawaii at the time. Guest performers included Danny Kaye, Mel Torme, Art Linkletter, Dennis Day and Bob Cummings.

Paid local performers who appeared regularly were Alfred Apaka, Martin Denny, Mahi Beamer and Lei Becker.

The show was a flop. It was canceled after a little more than a year.

A local TV executive said, “Aku is just not cut out for TV. He antagonizes people. Maybe it’s his face. Another thing, he tried to be the whole show. People got tired of seeing him.”

Another said, “I think he’s too crude for TV. Sometimes he’s downright offensive.”

Bob Krauss wrote in his Honolulu Advertiser column that “it was apparent after the first few of his shows that Aku wouldn’t duplicate his success as a radio personality on TV. Looking at him, somehow, was different than listening to him.”

A Day in the Life of a Fish-head

A year later, in 1955, the Advertiser offered him a weekly column called “In Case You Weren’t Listening.” In one article, Aku joked about a typical day, using his own version of pidgin. Schoolteachers were not amused.

“People are allatime asking,” Aku began, “‘Why’ncha write sometime about what happens after you’re pau with that cavalcade of junk every morning?’

“An’ I say, what’s with you? Cavalcade of junk, indeed! This is a high-class show I do … if you don’t pay no attention to the crudities.

“All this is beside the point and don’t answer the original question which is, what happens after 9 each morning?

“On sober second consideration, the question is a fair one. And most times asked out of honest curiosity. So I’ll give you a sample of A Day in the Life of a Fish-head.

“Like Wednesday, f’rinstance, I’m in the studio. At 9 a.m. I inform to all and sundry that their boy, Aku, is pau and like that.

“I close the switch and blow into what the management laughingly refers to as my ‘office.’

“This turns out to be a kind of short telephone booth (evidently left over from some midget’s funeral).

“Well, the okole is no sooner in the chair when the phone rings. I’m good for at least 200 calls immediately after the show every day.

“On the horn, a listener with a question. ‘Aku, what’s the name of the last song you played?’ ‘Innamorata,’ I tell her, by Dean Martin. ‘OK thanks.’ I hang up.

“The phone rings. Same voice says, ‘Hey, Aku, I just call up before, you remember?’

“Yeah, I remember, I tell her.”

“Well, how you spell the song’s name, eh?”

“I part with the spelling and that’s the end of that conversation. But that ain’t the end of the phone calls.

“I pick up the phone and a voice says, ‘This is the fast attack submarine USS Wahoo, speakin’ to you from 20,000 leagues under the sea.’

“Sure enough it was. The guys on board had been listening to the show from three days out of Hawaii and wanted to tell their wives (after having been in Far Eastern waters for six months) that they were docking at 11:30 that morning.

“They also requested ‘There’s Nothing Like a Dame’ from South Pacific.

“Another call: Would I try out for the next Honolulu Community Theater production of ‘No Time for Sergeants?’

“The old ham in me springs to the ready. The nostrils begin to quiver and immediately I can see the audience laughing, crying, applauding, reacting to the histrionics of Aku the comedian, Aku the tragedian, Aku the artist.

“All this takes but a second and as quickly as it comes, it goes.

“For alas and alack (as we of the theater are wont to say), I ain’t got the time. I refuse. Firmly, but with grace. And my refusal is accepted in the same gracious manner (but I feel with just a touch too much alacrity).

“An irate listener called and inquired caustically: ‘Was that record I played earlier released or did it escape?’

“After I played a new 12-inch disc, another guy called and said, ‘If that’s a 12-inch record, the only thing that would help it is a 13-inch hole.’

“‘What’s with you, Aku?’ another caller pipes. Why, I answer, what’s with me?

“’You know what I mean,’ the guys says and hangs up. Actually, I ain’t got the vaguest idea what’s on his mind … but these are the kind of calls I get.

“About three times a year I get a nasty letter from somebody who holds it in as long as they can, but finally have to let off a blast.

“They write about all the things I said in the past six months (in minute detail) and then go into long harangues about how wrong I am, and how they can’t stand it, and why don’t I drop dead, and like that.

“But you know what I don’t understand … how come they listen every day if it gives them such a headache?”

In another column, Aku announced the discovery of a new island, between Oahu and Kauai, named Patui. In Hawaiian, he said, it meant “spit in the ocean.”

It wasn’t a Hawaiian Island, but independent. A sort of “Pituitary Island,” he said.

Two listeners created a map of Patui and a list of scenic attractions the PVB (Patui Visitors Bureau) could promote.

Aku said, alternatively, it could be called “Oaku,” incorporating his own name.

Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss took issue with “Oaku” and said they should be called the Krauss Islands. They were “a haven for the lonely, a land free of pretense, worry and wealth, a glimmer of sanity on the edge of reality,” he said.

Have a question or suggestion? Contact Bob Sigall, author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books at Sigall@Yahoo.com.