Hawaiian Honeymoon by Paul Page and his Paradise Music

In 1958 PAUL PAGE released his debut album Hawaiian Honeymoon. The album has a certain gauze around it, in terms of the singing being very smooth and certainly romantic in spots, including a duet on this album with a female vocalist (not named in the liner notes) “Lani in Kaui.” Paul reaches his crooning maximum on “Blue Lagoon” complimented by a mocking bird and Paul’s roller-rink organ solo. Then, he gets more primitive than on any number he would ever do again with this, the original version of his song “Au-We Wahini (Chant).” A chorus of men and women get unscrupulously down in the background vocal parts, while Paul recklessly overdubs onto the tracks with bird noises, accompanied by what sounds like a variety of howling mammals, most likely cheetahs, gorillas… it’s anybody’s guess what may be in the Paul Page jungle. One of Paul’s best originals ends side one, “Pago Pago,” again sung alongside a beautiful girl who remains unidentified and the same crowd who chanted previously on “Au-We Wahini,” playfully making jolly in the background chorus parts. Paul was good at reeling off the ballads without boring anyone, with familiar-themed tunes such as a trio heard on side two of Hawaiian Honeymoon “At An Old Hawaiian Luau,” “Underneath a Maui Moon” and “Please Don’t Sing Aloha To Me.” There’s also the Hawaiian Cowboy novelty “Ki-yippee Kamaaina” about rounding up with the horses near Honolulu. Paul sings in “Ten Years on a Tropical Isle” about being out there “with no politics or inflation,” so one might as well go crazy… daily… “while the rest of the world goes by”. The cover of Hawaiian Honeymoon features one of Paul’s oil paintings, this one featuring the wife of the guy who ran The Turf Club in Pico Rivera (Elanor and Bill Leveloff), a restaurant in a suburb well South-east of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley. That’s the kind of gig Paul Page wound up having, once he got his general direction ready to go by the late ’50s. Over time he played The Lamplighter on Central Avenue in La Habra (1961), The Cross-Bow Inn on Sherman Way in Reseda (where infamous 1962 sit-ins took place on Johnny & Dorsey Burnettes weekly night, that would include Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Leon Russell, Red Rhodes and L.A.’s best Southern transplants jamming together in an out-of-the-way place), The Rossmoore Inn on Los Alamitos Boulevard (1966), The Casa Escobar in Sherman Oaks (a branch still exists on Wilshire Boulevard today) and during Christmas season in 1968, the perfectly-named Arturo’s Driftwood Restaurant on Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood… an area today among the centers for vintage clothing shops in L.A.

Paul Page the unsung hero of Polynesian Pop. A keyboard player, singer, band director, artist, writer, composer, professional basketball player and much more. He published many albums and wrote hundreds of songs. He loved Hawaiian music, wrote, directed and starred on the very first Polynesian TV show in Hollywood 1949, conducted a Hawaiian big band, and played in Hawaii for many years.