Trader Ho

As the band breaks into his theme song, Hawaiian Crooner Don Ho rides the spotlight in like a surfer on a 30-footer at Makaha. Except for a red lei ringing his powerful shoulders, he is either bare from the waist up or all in glistening white, from open velours shirt to tight jeans and stocking feet. In his left hand, he sometimes totes white ankle boots, in the right a snifter of Chivas Regal Scotch. With his tousled hair and sly brown eyes, he has the smirk of a beach bum who owns the passkey to every cabana on the island. Matrons rush onstage to buss him; others in the S.R.O. house palpitate like palm fronds. Don Ho, 37, is the big noise from Waikiki these days--the biggest in the history of Hawaiian show business.

$2.50 Mai Tais. In Honolulu, tourists line up for blocks for his three shows a night at Duke Kahanamoku's 700-seat club. On the mainland, he has done sellout business from the Royal Box of Manhattan's Americana Hotel to Los Angeles' Cocoanut Grove, where he holds the house record. His fans range from Lyndon Johnson's sister Rebekah Bobbitt, who attended a party welcoming him to New York, to Jacqueline Kennedy, who caught his first show at the Duke's on her visit to Hawaii last year, stayed right through to the 3 a.m. closing. * Last week the Singer Sewing Machine Co., which sponsored Herb Alpert on the No. 2-rated TV special of 1966-67, announced that this season it will go with Ho.

Don's success has little to do with his boozy baritone and self-accompaniment on the electric organ. "I am not a singer," he says, "but an entertainer with an ability to read the mood of an audience." According to Ho's reading, his fans have left their inhibitions on the mainland and want a come-on-strong virility. They don't even mind his occasional bathroom humor. There is a pidgin Hawaiian expression, "Letta go your blouse," roughly meaning "anything goes." That is Ho's approach--and appeal.

Hipper than the Hawaiian tradition of tinkling ukuleles, Ho has chucked the cloying Sweet Leilani, and only under audience pressure retreats to the Hawaiian Wedding Song. His beat ranges from big to bongo.

He does mainland standards like Coin' Out of My Head and latter-day island songs like You'll Never Find Another Kanaka [Native Boy] Like Me. Obligatory at every show is a song called Suck 'em Up, meaning "Bottoms up." When Don moans "Ah ha," the whole house raises $2.50 mai tais and belts along "Suck 'em up." "The more you drink and spend," he quips, "the more chance we get our boy. land back."

350 Beer. An islander of Chinese-Portuguese-German-Dutch ancestry, Don grew up on the other side of the mountains from Honolulu in Kaneohe, where his parents ran a neon cocktail lounge called Honey's. A top high school athlete, he won a scholarship to Springfield (Mass.) College. But after a homesick year, he finished up at the University of Hawaii (sociology), then spent five years as an Air Force pilot. "When I realized I'd never get to be a general," he says, "I resigned my commission and came home to run Honey's. Business was so bad that I began playing the electric organ and singing to get the customers to stay around for another 350 beer. I got them to sing with me, and pretty soon buiness picked up."

Today business has picked up to the point where Don earns $500,000 a year. He owns a record company, real estate as far east as Salt Lake City, two supper clubs in addition to Honey's. He has just bought out Restaurateur Trader Vic on the island, will expand the chain as Trader Ho's.

The shows at the Duke's remain his major interest. At 3 a.m., he says, "I tell everybody to go home and then I start unwinding, singing personal things for maybe 50 or 60 friends. When the sun comes up, I go home." Not always, of course, to his wife and six kids; he also keeps a bachelor's pad for further unwinding.

* Next day she invited Don to entertain a swinging party of 35 at her rented home in Kahala. So swinging, Ho says, that he pitched the Capri-pants-clad hostess into her own swimming pool.

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