One of the most beautiful love songs ever written, "I’ll Remember You," was penned by Kui Lee around 1964.

The song was written for his wife, Nani, who had left him to go live with her sister in New Jersey. They had a tempestuous relationship, and it wasn’t the first time she had left him. But it was the last.

Don Ho recalled the night Lee walked in with a new composition.

Lee said he had written the song in just four hours but estimated the song would earn him $500,000. He asked Don to arrange it.

"I sat up all night with him absorbing the essence of what he was writing about," Ho recalled. "The next day I wrote down the arrangement of the song at the club. That night I said that this was written by a friend of mine. At that time he had cancer in his throat. I sang it with the Aliis. I’ll never forget that night. At that moment everybody had tears in their eyes."

"Then I introduced Kui. He came on stage and he sang it. Then everybody really had tears."

Kuiokalani Lee was born in Shanghai in 1932. His parents, Billy and Ethel Lee, were Hawaiian musical entertainers. After attending Roosevelt High School, Lee performed on the mainland as a dancer and choreographer at the Hawaiian Room at the Lexington Hotel in New York City. Nani was a hula dancer in the show.

Lee returned to Hawaii and for a while was a performer and doorman at Honey’s nightclub in Kaneohe where Don Ho got his start. Honey was Don’s mother.

George Kanahele, in his encyclopedic "Hawaii Music & Musicians," says Lee’s "association with Ho gave him the platform with which to launch his career as a composer."

Lee’s songs made Don Ho famous. Some of his hits included "Lahainaluna," "One Paddle Two Paddle," "Suck ‘Em Up" and "Ain’t No Big Thing." Tony Bennett, the Brothers Cazimero, Andy Williams, Herb Alpert and Roger Williams are just some of the artists who have recorded his songs.

Kanahele says Lee "exerted a profound influence on the substance and style, if not the mood, of Hawaiian music. He introduced jazz, pop and rock into his melodies and rhythms."

"Best known as a composer," Kanahele continues, "Lee was also a talented dancer, choreographer, singer and all around entertainer."

Cancer claimed Lee in 1966 when he was just 34. Seven years later, when I moved to Hawaii to attend the University of Hawaii, Lee’s memory had not faded. We sang his songs at parties, and countless people told me I had missed one of Hawaii’s greatest treasures.

Elvis Presley returned to Honolulu in 1973 and, at the request of Eddie Sherman, put on his "Aloha from Hawaii" concert, which raised $75,000 for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund. The performance was broadcast via satellite around the world to more than a billion viewers.

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Bob Sigall, author of the "Companies We Keep" books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.