Legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho has died at the age of 76. He had suffered from heart problems for a number of years, and had undergone experimental heart surgery and the recent installation of a pacemaker. The singer, well known for his signature song 'Tiny Bubbles', passed away on Saturday morning due to heart failure, according to his publicist Donna Jung.
Ho was born in the Hawaiian capital of Honolulu, of mixed Chinese, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Dutch and German descent. After studying in the US and Hawaii, he joined the US Air Force, flying fighter jets. He left the air force in 1959 and began singing publicly, initially at his parents' bar, Honey's, and then at Dukes in Waikiki, where he was discovered by record company types. Initially signed to Reprise, he released his debut album in 1965 and began playing in high profile venues around the same time.
He continued to entertain tourists in Hawaii for forty years, amongst them Hollywood stars such as Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra, who made a point of seeing his Waikiki show as part of their holiday on the islands. Ho maintained that his career as a musician was an accident. On his early appearances at Honey's, which he put in when his father asked him to, he says: "I had no intention of being an entertainer. I just played songs I liked from the radio, and pretty soon that place was jammed. Every weekend there would be lines down the street".
Ho also became a TV star, hosting his own programme The Don Ho Show on US network ABC from 1976 - 1977. He also made guest appearances on other shows such as The Brady Bunch, I Dream Of Jeannie and Charlie's Angels. "I've had too much fun all these years," he said in a 2004 interview. "I feel real guilty about it".
He's survived by his wife and ten children.