Martin Denny Band "Fathers of Exotica"
You know, back in the golden days of Waikiki — when the air was thick with the scent of plumeria and the nights sparkled with the glow of Tiki torches — there was one sound that wrapped around the whole scene like a lei on a visiting cousin. That sound belonged to a man named Martin Denny.
Martin wasn’t born in Hawai‘i, but once he set foot on the islands, it was like the place claimed him. Sitting behind his piano at the Shell Bar in the Hawaiian Village Hotel, he’d play the kind of music that took you on a journey — even if you never left your seat. Birds chirping, island drums beating, soft piano floating like the trade winds. He called it Exotica, and man, it was the soundtrack of Waikiki’s golden era.
His music wasn’t just notes and rhythm — it was the sound of paradise. It was the sound of sipping a mai tai under the moonlight, the sound of an island romance, the sound of adventure in far-off tropical places... even if you were just parked at the bar on Ala Moana Boulevard.
And the thing is, he didn’t just play for tourists. Locals loved his stuff too, because whether you were from Kaimuki, Kalihi, or Kaneohe, when Martin Denny played, you felt like you were part of something special. He made Waikiki feel like the center of the universe.
So whenever you hear the name Martin Denny, or that first few notes of "Quiet Village" — close your eyes, take a deep breath, and you’ll be right back there. Waikiki, the way it used to be. Magic.
Martin Denny had a lot of friends in the airline industry as he got to know all the pilots and the beautiful flight attendants. He and his group would always be looking for new sounds to add to their seamlessly endless amount of instruments to their collection. They would always buy unique musical instruments when ever they went to some new destination as a way to learn, explore, and discover what sort of sound they wanted to make. There was this one time where a pilot had gotten a gong from a Buddhist temple that they sold to the pilot and he brought it to Denny who would use them in his shows.
Stereophonic Sound: Before the time of "Stereo" the recordings of the band was on what was called "Monophonic" which has been shortened to "Mono". The LP was "Quiet Village".
Martin Denny
Arthur Lyman "The King of Hawaiian Lounge Music"
Arthur Hunt Lyman (1932-2002) was one of Hawaii's iconic Vibraphone players and Hawaii musicians as he was a household name as much as others who were in the Martin Denny Band. Lyman was famous for influencing a new type of jazz music that became known as Exotica. He graduated from McKinley High School (1951) as there were few options for school back then. He really liked the island and enjoyed the beaches, the ocean, and would use his sunglasses when observing the sunsets.
Born: Kauai, U.S. Territory of Hawaii, February 2, 1932, he was predominantly Hawaiian, but also had French, Belgian and Chinese.
Lyman Family: The Lyman Family had moved to Makiki on Oahu after the Father of the family had lost his eye due to an accident on Kauai.
Lyman family would go on to become members “Jesus Coming Soon” a Church on Middle Street.
Career: At age 8, Arthur Lyman, made his public debut playing a toy-marimba on the "Listerine Amateur Hour" KGMB Radio station playing "Twelfth Street Rag".
"I was working at Leroy's, a little nightclub down by Kakaako. I was making about $60 a week, working Monday to Saturday, from 9 to 2 in the morning, and then I'd go to school. So it was kind of tough" -Arthur Lyman
Arthur Lyman enjoyed hanging out at the Tahitian Lanai as it was one of the hottest spots in down back in the day. He always wanted two big glasses of water as he was always thirsty the guy could drink a whole pitcher if you let him said one of his old buddies. His preferred area was on the lagoon to just get together to sit and talk story with Turkey and Ducky.
He had an athletic body because the man kept on moving around all over the place. Arthur Lyman liked to keep on going places and doing this and that, like when he would go to Makiki to play volleyball with the fire fighters there "Makiki fire station" around 1957. When he was a young boy he always wanted to be someone who saved people, become a community person, a man of courage, so he wanted to be a fireman.
Vibraphone-Style:
Going Solo:
He decided to break off from the Martin Denny Band and form his own solo group. Arthur Lyman Group was known to have had a long running gig at the "Shell Bar at the Village" where they practiced for their recording sessions. Denny and Lyman's styles are actually quite different with Denny looking to expand the sound of Exotica after it was established, which made it much more "experimental", and he would move towards a jazzy harmonizing. When Lyman went his own way in going solo his style went more towards a sensation of ambient, dreamy, and sit around the fire place vibe.
Quiet Village and Stereophonics, by the time Stereo became in fashion and it was all the rage back then the company "Liberty" wanted to record "Quiet Village" in stereo, but this was already when Lyman left the group. The re-recording of what is considered the newer version had replaced Lyman with Julius Wechter on vibes.
Taboo Album (1958), was his debut-album and considered one of his most famous albums with staying on the Billboard charts for over a year.
Christmas Album, Mele Kalikimaka (1963. Merry Christmas) is known as the old school anthem in the christmas season for those of "Tiki Culture" with a Tiki Christmas in America. It is full of sound with the drum set, marimba, shrieking macaws, and rolling surf that is melodies that have been carved out by the genre of Exotica. At the time he was doing gigs at the Hilton Hawaiian Village where he would go on Sundays to go play Volleyball.
1974, Kono Hawaii, Anaheim, California, he played in the Polynesian Room with the Society of Seven.
In 2000, he was playing at the New Otani lobby above The Hau Tree Lanai. The waiters and bellhops would do bird calls at the appropriate times to assist in the performance there.
Elks Lodge was a favorite hang out in his later years with his wife Joanne.
Passing: Lyman had died from "Esophageal Cancer".
John Kramer
Augie Colon “The Grandfather of Hawaii Percussion” 
August "Augie" Borero Colon Sr (1928-2004) is known as “The Grandfather of Hawaii Percussion” whose music spans the genres of jazz, lounge, latin, afro-cuban, and specialized in exotica. He is one of the best percussionists world wide and has played with some of the best like Carlos Santana and Tito Puente. In 1901 his parents moved from Puerto Rico to Oahu in 1901 for a better life working in Hawaii’s sugarcane plantations where they would end up having children after years of making Hawaii home. He grew up surrounded by music and his first drums were tin cans and carved his own bongos where he would go and practice as well as learn on the street corner. Augie had a bunch of things he did like boxing, dancing, daredevil driving, and raced motorcycles.
Entertainment, Augie Colon, he was a true showman and top performer with good looks and of course a legendary percussionist. He was the voice behind the Jungle sounds of Martin Denny, because he would experiment with bird calls and he knew all the bird calls that the rest of the band could do and then some like the boar or the buzzing fly. When the group reached national fame in the 1950s he would have reached ears all over the world as the voice behind the bird calls with the hit single "Quiet Village". People were confused at first because it was like Augie could control the birds and teach the birds how to sing, but no, it was him practicing the bird calls and it made the crowd interested. When going home he would be walking around and hear a bird in a tree and try to mimic the bird, or when hunting hear the animals on a hike and try to make the sounds with his mouth, so it was kind of like learning about animals and mimicking them.
Martin Denny was playing in a Jazz band around the hotels in Waikiki and one of the places he was performing was at the Shell Bar in the Hawaiian Village. One night and was approached by Augie to join the group, so he joined at age 22, and the group would bring in Augie when there were latin tunes, but that would start changing as a group of frogs were hanging out by the pool joining in to the music. The bullfrogs near the pond by the pool seemed to be able to catch on and the band started to try out various nature calls one night as a gag with monkey chattering, a rumbling, surf crashing, and bird calls would become part of the act. A person in the audience asked Martin Denny “Could you get the arrangement with the birds and the frogs?”. And on another day someone else asked “you know the song with the frogs”. Martin knew that the group was making those sounds, but to hear people wanting more of it would be sort of a turning point in the music to add that in as a normal thing. In the song there would be marks on a sheet that would be when the animal noises would come out in the song.
Augie Colon also played with Rolando Sanchez “Pioneer of Hawaii Latin” where they were both great latin performers. The bird calls that were in the genre of Exotica, a lounge music style in Hawaii that would be mixing in the beats with the Afro-cuban salsa merengue influences where the rhythm of these two musicians would play off each other. The sound, the beat, the rhythms, the way you learn to do the hands, were all part of the congas, so this was used as a way to see what the other was doing. They would keep an eye on each other's speed, and control, the timing, the very precise of the hits to connect through the ears as they could also feel it through their whole body, there was a body connection between them. It was like the two of them could feel and learn about each other's styles when they were playing with each other for the Don Ho Show at the original Hilton Dome for a special conga drum segment. The Hilton Dome was right across from Ala Moana and that's where Don Ho was when he moved from the marketplace. He and Rolando met Don ho and he was like “Wow i would like you guys to play with me for the show” and that is how two of them came onto his show and the crowd loved it.
Exotica was played in lounges that evoked the feelings of what people imagined mid-century paradise would be that was psychedelic, jazzy, and contemporary for its time. Breaking the genre into the mainstream would be with Martin Denny with the album “Exotica” and what Augie Colon did would give the music something that was what people in foreign countries saw as sounds of Hawaii in the 8th album “Quiet Village: The Exotic Sounds of Martin Denny”. Exotica was really big in “Tiki Culture” and a sound that was so distinct would be from “Hawaii Tiki Culture” that would be ever growing during that time with many lounges and bars at the hotels would feature exotica. The differences were that there was an introduction of a vibraphone from Arthur Lyman to give it a tropical feel and the sounds from nature gave that unique ambience of a polynesian forest. It established what people would refer to as “Hawaiian Exotica” and that really is credited to Martin Denny, his band and especially Augie Colon for doing the sounds so well. People really couldn’t tell the difference, people to this day think the sounds are sound samples, but it really was just Augie Colon doing his thing. He would go on to push the boundaries of psychedelic exotica with his expansion of drums in his collection.
In addition to his percussion work, Augie also went on to release his own solo albums. His percussion would be continued to be played by him and by many admirers of his Colon-Style of playing, so it isn’t something that happened by chance, but something that was continued to be perpetuated. With the drums he was so free feeling and he did respect his instruments and was open to hand it down to those who would want to pursue it and that would show people that hitting, clapping, tapping, and banging on things can tell a big story and bring people into the present instead of getting lost in the music the percussion let people know they were there. As the other parts of the song are played with the bass people start to get into it and the vibraphone is immersive while the percussion brings people back so people are going in and out and are engaged in their imagination and are still in the reality of things.
Hawaiian percussion would be another genre and there is a history between Hawaiian percussion, native rhythms, and native way of playing that would be assimilated in tiki world wide. I think mostly the verse of that drumming style is African for everyone and all the percussionists lead back there. If you research the roots.
1970s, Augie Colon use to play at the Haleiwa Theater
The Colon Ohana would live on Molokai and he lived on Mauna Loa.
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