Don Ho, Hawaiian Musician, Dies at 76

Don Ho, an entertainer who defined popular perceptions of Hawaiian music in the 1960s and held fast to that image as a peerless Waikiki nightclub attraction, died yesterday in Honolulu. He was 76.

The cause was heart failure, his daughter Dayna Ho said.

Mr. Ho was a durable spokesman for the image of Hawaii as a tourist playground. His rise as a popular singer dovetailed with a visitor boom that followed statehood in 1959 and the advent of affordable air travel. For 40 years, his name was synonymous with Pacific Island leisure, as was “Tiny Bubbles,” his signature hit, which helped turn him into a national figure.

Born Donald Tai Loy Ho in the Honolulu enclave of Kaka‘ako, Mr. Ho had an ethnic background worthy of the islands’ melting-pot ideal: he was of Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and German descent. He grew up in Kaneohe, on the windward side of the island of Oahu, and it was there that he began his singing career at Honey’s, a restaurant and lounge owned by his mother, Emily.

Mr. Ho enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1954, receiving his certification as a fighter pilot in Texas but never seeing combat. He transferred to Military Airlift Command and flew cargo transport routes across the Pacific before leaving the service the year that Hawaii joined the Union as the 50th state.

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