The Hawaiian Wedding Song

Decca released The Hawaiian Wedding Song in 1964, a posthumous Alfred Apaka set built around his Hawaiian Village Serenaders sides. Apaka had been the Waikiki showroom voice at Henry J. Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village — the hotel that booked Denny, Lyman, and later Gene Rains into the Shell Bar — before his death in 1960.

The title track (“Ke Kali Nei Au”) sits with other island standards and ballads (“Fair Hawaii,” “Beautiful Kahana,” “Hawaiian Paradise”). The tone is crooner hospitality: clear baritone, hotel orchestra, no bird-call novelty. MCA’s later CD keeps the Decca program in print for buyers who want Apaka under one title.

Apaka was also the talent director who steered Gene Rains’s quartet to Decca. This LP is the vocal face of that hotel circuit — useful when the bar needs a real Waikiki singer instead of another instrumental travelogue.