TAU MOE 1908-2004

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Humble Laie resident was famous around the world as a steel guitarist

By Mary Vorsino
mvorsino@starbulletin.com

For most of his adult life, Tau Moe was a hit abroad and an unknown at
home.

It took about 60 years for word to spread to the islands that the
Hawaiian musician and master steel guitarist was a star, traveling the
globe to entertain world leaders and packed crowds. By the time Moe
started getting accolades locally, he was already in his 80s.

Moe, who learned steel guitar from the instrument's inventor and
brought Hawaiian music to dozens of countries starting in the 1920s,
died Thursday (24-06-04) at home. He was 95.

Within the last half-decade, Moe's contributions to Hawaiian music
have been recognized by Mayor Jeremy Harris, Gov. Linda Lingle, the
state House and Senate, and the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association. In
January the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii named Moe a "Living
Treasure."

"He never went around tooting his own horn," said family friend and
Hawaiian music historian Ishmael Stagner. "He was a very humble
person. ... He just didn't believe he had accomplished that much."

During his lifetime, Moe and his family played for Winston Churchill,
Adolf Hitler, Aristotle Onassis, Mahatma Gandhi and Egypt's King
Farouk, to name a few.

The McKinley High School graduate also helped at least 150 of his
Jewish musician friends escape Germany and Austria just before the
height of Adolf Hitler's reign by having them impersonate groupies,
relatives and stagehands. Once, he even sneaked a few Jewish buddies
over the border by hiding them in his car's trunk among the folds of
his colorful stage costumes.

"He was courageous," said Stagner, who is writing a book about the Moe
family. "He smuggled his friends out of Germany at great personal
risk."

In an interview with the Star-Bulletin earlier this year, Moe treated
the episode a bit lighter.

"I wasn't scared with anything," he said. "Hitler didn't know."

Moe was born in American Samoa and raised in Laie, where he retired in
1982.

While still in his teens, Moe joined an entertainment group -- Madame
Riviere's Hawaiians -- that featured his future wife, Rose Kaohu.

The group went to Manila in 1928.

Two years later, Moe and Kaohu had branched out on their own and
recorded eight albums together.

During their six decades on the road, the couple traveled the world
seven times and learned more than 10 languages while doing what they
loved best: playing the Hawaiian tunes they had learned as kids.

And the Moes did not slow down after having two children.

Instead, the Moe family performed as a troupe, which was a sell-out
act in its heyday.

They toured Singapore, the Middle East, Germany, Italy and India.

They found fans of Hawaiian music in Egypt, Bulgaria, Switzerland,
Denmark, England, Sweden and Finland.

While Moe was in charge of the steel guitar and tap dancing for the
group, wife Rose took care of the singing and sprinkled in some
dancing and playing of her own.

The Moe children -- son Lani, who was born in Japan, and daughter
Dorian, born in India -- played instruments, danced, sang and were
featured in a number of European films.

Dorian Moe said her father was a meticulous performer.

"He would always say, 'Either do it correctly or don't do it at all.
If you know you can't sing, don't even bother.'"

"It helped me," she said. "It helped us improve."

Stagner said he met the Moe family in American Samoa about 42 years
ago, after watching them perform.

"The greatest surprise was that here were these Polynesians that spoke
something like 10 European languages, had played in these major
houses," he said. "They did a continental show. ... He (Moe) was doing
steel guitar that I had never heard done."

Stagner said that over the years, Moe continued to surprise him with
details of the family's travels. When the war in Iraq started, Stagner
said, Moe talked about the beauty of Baghdad and the cities of Basra
and Fallujah -- places he had traveled to in the 1940s and '50s.

"I'm sitting there with my mouth agape," Stagner said, "because it
sounds too fantastic."

In February, Debashish Bhattacharya, one of India's top steel
guitarists, made a special point to meet Moe after coming to the
islands for a performance.

Moe taught Bhattacharya's grandfather to play the steel guitar in
1932, Stagner said.

Bhattacharya "could not believe he was meeting the person who brought
the steel guitar to India," Stagner said. "Papa Tau was the last of
that first generation of steel guitar players."

Moe is survived by his daughter. Services for him are scheduled for
10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Sixth Ward Chapel. Visitation begins at 9:30 a.m.

"We'll miss him," said Dorian Moe, a performer at the Polynesian
Cultural Center. "And a lot of the entertainment people around the
world will miss him. He will never be forgotten in that sense."