Kui Lee - Biography

Biography

Lee was born in Shanghai, China. His entertainer parents Billy and Ethel Lee were of Scottish, Hawaiian and Chinese ancestry. Ethel died in 1936. Kui's widowed father took him back to Hawaii when he was five years old and enrolled him in Kamehameha Schools and later Roosevelt High School.

Lee worked as a knife dancer and choreographer in the Hawaiian Room of New York's Lexington Hotel.

There he met and married singer-hula dancer Rose Frances Naone Leinani, known to everyone as Nani. Nani returned to Hawaii with Kui and performed with him, as well as with Don Ho at Honey's. She also performed with Sterling Mossman, Tommy Sands, Sons of Hawaii and Zulu. Kui and Nani would have four children together - Wailana, Mahealani, Maile and Kimo

By 1961, he was working at Club Jetty in Nawiliwili, Kauai. He later went to work at Honey's in Kaneohe, owned by Emily "Honey" Ho, mother of Don. The connection would launch a symbiotic relationship between Don and Kui that transcended Kui's early death. Recording Kui's songs made Don a star, and it was from Don's on-stage patter that most people learned of Kui Lee. Onstage, Don gave Kui full credit for creating island music for a new generation.

Kui Lee only achieved fame for his own musical compositions toward the very end of his life. The Extraordinary Kui Lee was the only album released during his lifetime. Famous songs on that album included I'll Remember You (brought into even greater fame by Don Ho, Elvis Presley and Makaha Sons of Ni'ihau) and Days of my Youth, now both well-known standards in Hawai'i.