Hawaii - James Michener [617]
"I will," she said simply.
Malama was an unusually outspoken woman, for a Hawaiian, and she asked, "Will it be taken with grace if a Chinese girl sings that particular song? It's so especially Hawaiian."
"Da kine people better get accustomed," Kelly snapped, "because dis wahine ... a true meadowlark."
"What do you think, Hong Kong?" Malama asked.
It was apparent from his scowl that he was going to reserve his negative judgment until he got Judy alone, but his daughter said for him, "He'll be there, and so will I."
Back in the Buick, Hong Kong stormed: "I don't want my daughter singing in a night club!"
"But I want to sing," Judy said firmly.
"People will laugh, Judy. My daughter, singing in a club. You, a Chinese making believe you're Hawaiian."
"Dad, for a long time I've wanted to sing . . ."
"But Kelly Kanaka! A no-good, broken-down Hawaiian!"
"What's wrong with a Hawaiian?" Judy snapped.
"I didn't raise a respectable Chinese girl to be messing around with a Hawaiian!"
"You're messing around, as you call it, with Malama."
"That's business, Judy. You're asking for trouble, girl."
"You be there tomorrow night, Dad. I want to see at least one friendly face."
The team of Kelly and Judy created a sensation in more ways than one. To the mainland tourists they were the first pair in the islands who showed any real sense of professional savoir-faire, and the five powerful gray-haired women who accompanied them on that first night were remarkable, for they set off the frail beauty of the girl and the lithe young masculinity of the baritone, so that if only the tourists had to be considered, the team was both an artistic and a financial success. But to the residents of Hawaii it was shocking on two counts. To the Chinese community it was inconceivable that on the very day that Hong Kong's appointment to the Malama Kanakoa Trust was announced, confirming as it were his respectability in the community, his well-trained daughter should appear in a public night club, her navel showing, singing and doing the hula with a man like Kelly Kanakoa. At least four major Chinese families whose sons had been thinking of marrying the delectable music teacher said flatly, "We will never accept her as a daughter-in-law." But to the Hawaiian community it was an affront past understanding that an alii family like the Kanakoas would choose as Kelly’s singing partner a pure Chinese girl, and for her to presume to dress like an honest Hawaiian and thus palm herself off to the public was morally outrageous.
So the Chinese boycotted Judy and the Hawaiians boycotted Kelly, but Manny Fineberg of Clarity Records heard them on the second night and signed them up to a profitable contract, but he did stipulate, "On the cover of the album, we got to have a pure Hawaiian girl. Judy can sing like an angel, but she can't get over them slant-eyes." As the young singers were driving home that night Judy said, "Kelly, I think that for our next album we ought to form our own company, right here in Hawaii." And that was the start of Island Records, which Judy Kee ran with an iron hand, seeking out fresh talent to sing famous old songs, so that before long, half the Hawaiian, melodies played in America were produced by this clever Chinese girl.
She also devised the costume by which Kelly became famous in the island night clubs. She had a tailor make him skin-tight pants, one leg blue, the other red, with frayed ends reaching below the knee. For a top she found a subdued tapalike fabric from Java and had it made into a tight jacket with long ends that tied at the waist. His hat continued to be a yachting cap, worn on the back of his head, but his shoes were heavy leather sandals which she designed and which he could kick off when he wished to dance. "You must become a visual symbol," she insisted, and she did the same, with her exotic face framed in flowers and her two braids showing over an island sarong. But the thing