John Berger, Star Advertiser

James Daniel Pahinui — known for most of his life as “Bla,” the greatest left-handed slack key guitarist of his generation — died Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at home in Waialua, after a long battle with cancer. He was 76.

The second son born to slack key master Charles Philip “Gabby” Pahinui and his wife, Emily Kauha Pahinui, Bla Pahinui learned how to play ukulele in childhood by watching his father, but only took up
the guitar several years later while he was incarcerated in what was then known as the Koolau Boys Home.

His teacher, another teenage inmate, was righthanded, and so he learned to play on a guitar that was strung for a right-handed guitarist — “upside down and backwards” for him.

Playing “upside down and backwards” meant hitting the guitar strings in reverse order when he strummed chords, picking the bass strings with his index finger and the higher strings with his thumb when playing slack key, and set him apart from both his right-handed peers and those left-handed guitarists who re-strung their guitars to be played left-handed. This became one of his personal trademarks as a performer.

Pahinui’s first love as a performer was rock ’n’ roll, and he played Waikiki nightclubs as a member of the Playboys, a local bar band, in the early 1960s. In 1969 he replaced his younger brother, Cyril Pahinui, as a member of the Sunday Manoa and made his debut as a recording artist on the group’s second album, “Hawaiian Time.” He joined his father, Cyril and two other brothers, Philip and Martin, in recording a series of highly regarded albums in the 1970s, and followed them with several solo albums in the 1980s. He recorded a single album with Cyril and Martin in 1992, and several solo albums after that— including two for George Winston’s Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters series. In 2016 he came full circle, releasing an album of rock ’n’ roll classics as the leader of quartet named Big Knife.

Throughout his career Pahinui was also known for his strong and soulful singing style that reminded many people of his father. Bla Pahinui received the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. Despite his talent as a musician, Pahinui spent much of his life working inconstruction or doing park maintenance for the city. He excelled at counseling “at risk” youth; whatever they had done, seen or suffered, they found a kindred soul and heard the no-nonsense voice of experience in Bla Pahinui.

Survivors include his wife, Kathleen Pahinui, his daughter Brandy Clark, his brother Philip Pahinui,
and sisters Margaret Pahinui Puuohau and Madelyn Pahinui Coleman. Services are set for Sunday, September 15, 2019 at Mililani Memorial Park, Mauka Chapel, 10 am.