Of the twenty-two unique tunes that Sam Ku West recorded, six of them were also recorded by Sol Hoopii at about the same time: "Farewell Blues", "Lele Ulaula", "Palolo", "St Louis Blues", "Stack O'Lee Blues", and "Ua Like Noa Like". They also both did a version of "Wang Wang Blues", but Sol's version was recorded in the 30's on electric lap steel. Except for Sol's version of "Ua Like Noa Like" I've got recordings of all these tunes by both players.

It's interesting to compare and contrast the two players. I like them both, but in general Sol's playing is a little smoother and livelier to my ears.

They have a very different take on "Palolo". Sam's version is very Hawaiian, Sol's version is jazzy.

In looking at some discography information I noticed that they both recorded "Lele Ulaula" in March of 1928. It's probably not a coincidence.

One thing that really suprised me was how similar a couple of the songs were. Their arrangements of "Stack O'Lee Blues" are almost identical. You can match these two versions of the song up chorus for chorus and in each chorus they both do the same "steel guitar tricks" (e.g. they both play close to the bridge, or play a high tremolo, or play a slidey version). The same is true for "Farewell Blues".

For both of these tunes, Sol's recording was the earlier one. Both were recorded by Sol in 1926. Sam's version were recorded in 1927 and 1928. The fact that he "copied" Sol Hoopii is probably not a lack of creativity on Sam's part. It probably has more to do with the nature of the record business in the 1920's.

I know a lot of Forumites listen to a lot of old steel guitar recordings. Does anyone else have any other observations?

[This message was edited by Gary Anwyl on 30 December 2005 at 12:04 PM.]