Harry Owens

Harry Robert Owens (April 18, 1902 – December 12, 1986) was an American composer, bandleader, songwriter, and Broadway performer born in O'Neill, Nebraska. He first took up the cornet while playing in a small band on a Montana Indian reservation, and by age 14 he was working the vaudeville circuit. Though he pursued studies toward a law career, he abandoned that path and formed a band in 1926, the same year he was booked into the Lafayette Cafe in Los Angeles, where he auditioned a young Bing Crosby.

In 1931, Owens appeared on Broadway in the play The Constant Sinner. His career took a decisive turn in 1934 when he traveled to Hawaii and was appointed music director of The Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki. He immersed himself in the local culture by working alongside native Hawaiians, learning traditional and contemporary Hawaiian songs and transcribing them into Western notation for the first time. He restructured the Royal Hawaiians by dividing the ensemble into separate Hawaiian and haole instrumental sections, with the steel guitar serving as the band's defining sonic element. Beginning in 1935, Owens and his orchestra became regular featured performers on the Saturday night radio broadcast Hawaii Calls. Hilo Hattie also performed as a featured artist with the Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra.

Also in 1934, Owens composed "Sweet Leilani" to mark the birth of his daughter, and the song became the signature piece of his Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra. When Bing Crosby vacationed in Honolulu with his wife Dixie Lee, he heard the song and sought to include it in his forthcoming film Waikiki Wedding. Owens was initially reluctant, but Crosby persuaded him. Producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. resisted the inclusion of the song, and Crosby responded by leaving for the golf course and refusing to return to the set until Hornblow relented. "Sweet Leilani" won Best Song at the 10th Academy Awards in 1938 and became Crosby's first gold record.

Owens and his Royal Hawaiians appeared on screen in the 1938 Fred MacMurray film Cocoanut Grove, which featured the Owens-composed songs "Cocoanut Grove" and "Dreamy Hawaiian Moon" alongside "Sweet Leilani." The band also appeared in the 1942 Betty Grable film Song of the Islands. In 1949, Owens began making regular television appearances in California. He is credited with approximately 300 hapa haole songs — a style of Hawaiian music, developed by Sonny Cunha and Johnny Noble, in which native Hawaiian music is interpreted by non-native musicians — and achieved considerable commercial success within that tradition. He also founded a tourism company and a music publishing business. Owens died in Eugene, Oregon, on December 12, 1986. The following year, the Hawai'i Academy of Recording Arts presented him with the 1987 Na Hoku Hanohano Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the entertainment industry in Hawaii.