Lotus Land

Hawaiian crooner Alfred Apaka, talent director at Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village Hotel in Waikiki, found vibraphonist Gene Rains’s quartet in a Honolulu bar and booked them into the Shell Bar — the hotel lounge that had hosted Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman. Apaka then steered them to Decca.

During a Decca junket at the Hawaiian Village in September 1959, Apaka had the label hear the quartet. Decca signed them and released Lotus Land in 1960. The debut lineup was Rains on vibraphone, Paul Conrad on piano, Archie Grant on bass and flute, and Alan Watanabe on percussion. Two more Decca LPs and a Vocalion compilation followed in the early ’60s.

The sound is vibraphone-led jazz phrasing and light percussion on Hawaiian and American standards — no bird-call gags competing with conversation. It is dinner-service music from the same Waikiki circuit as Exotica, quieter on the novelty and steady for a home bar playlist.