After years on the road throughout the world, Rose and Tau Moe live in Laie near their daughter Dorian. Photo by Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin

Tau Moe holds the stainless steel National Resonator Guitar in his lap, just touching the strings. Next to him, his wife, Rose, starts to sing.

It is magic. His playing is effortless, her singing poignant. The haunting sound of the steel guitar blends perfectly with the clear falsetto.

The sound of steel guitar is the sound of the romance of Hawaii today and in days past. It echoes through the history Tau and Rose made after they met in music class in downtown Honolulu in the 1920s.

The story comes second.

Moe is Samoan. He was born Aug. 13, 1908 and grew up in Laie, where he and his uncles joined an entertainment troupe, Madame Riviere's Hawaiians, that featured Rose Kaohu, who was a dancer and musician.

When the Royal Hawaiian Hotel opened in 1927, Moe played steel guitar.

He and Rose went to Manila in 1928 with Madame Riviere, the former French ambassador, who formed a troupe to play in the Pacific's former colonial outposts.

By 1930, they were on their own, and had recorded eight records. They married, sang and danced, raised two children and went on the road - for 54 years.

The Tau Moe Family traveled around the world seven times, learning a half-dozen languages, making hundreds of records in countries as diverse as India, Greece, Yugoslavia and Germany.

They didn't come back to Hawaii for good until 1982: World famous recording stars and entertainers. Unknowns in Hawaii.

"He is unacknowledged in his own home. More than anybody else, he deserves to be acknowledged as the Hawaiian music ambassador to the world," musicologist, author and international musician Robert Brozman says about Moe.

"He was playing steel guitar where it was never heard before."

Tall and dignified even at 87, Moe wants to tell hundreds of good stories about living on the road for five decades. He is content in quiet obscurity, not interested in dwelling on the obvious slight delivered by the local Hawaiian music community, although he does note, "I don't think people realize what we did for Hawaii."

A publicity photo from their heyday.

"Everything I got came from singing and playing my guitar," Moe says.

It all started with the steel guitar, invented in Hawaii at the turn of the century by Joe Kekuku, who, in the Kamehameha Schools machine shop, designed a steel bar that would sustain a musical note when pressed across the strings.

Moe plays with a style that can be found only in archive records. Hawaiian entertainer Keith Haugen explains that when Moe left Hawaii in 1928 he was playing a type of music popular at the end of the 19th century.

"He is a very good musician," Haugen said. "His idea of what is Hawaiian music didn't change. What he plays is like what he played 50 or 60 years ago."

The sound of Hawaiian steel guitar took off after the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, according to Hawaiian music historian Harry Soria.

"There was a huge salt water fish tank, plants from Hawaii. In the center of the Hawaii pavilion was a stage with continuous shows with steel guitars and hula dancers," Soria said.

"America went nuts and the Hawaiian craze was born. First the ukulele was popularized. Hula dancers became popular ... Tin Pan Alley music started."

The Hawaiian steel guitar hypnotized people. It became BIG business, in records, on the radio. At least one side of everybody's record had to include Hawaiian or Polynesian music.

Through countless countries, Tau and Rose managed to keep a family together.

"They are a very loving family," Soria said. "They lived on the road for decades. In all, it is just incredible."

"What a life I had in show business. I thought I was going to get some money and come home and go to the university," Moe said.

But when he decided to come home, his children, by then established professionals, wanted to know what this home thing was.

"My dad said he wanted to go home," Lani recalled. "I said what is home?"

For more than a half century home was hotel after hotel. Meeting the rich and famous, living with the common folk and spreading Hawaiian music.

"In our (first) performance we weren't allowed to speak English," Moe said. "Our manager told us that was so everyone would think we were natives. It was all show business."

Within years, he became one of the most influential Hawaiian musicians in Asia and Europe. Moe is credited with introducing the steel guitar to the Asian subcontinent.

More than anybody else, he deserves to be acknowledged as the Hawaiian music ambassador to the world. He was playing steel guitar where it was never heard before.

Robert Brozman

Musicologist

Everyone has a story about Moe in India. Brozman talks about how Moe met Gandhi. Dorian recounts the family story of how Lani was born during Moslem-Hindu riots in India and a taxi equipped with dual machine guns was needed to get Rose to the hospital for his birth.

Moe tells how he taught an Indian maharaja how to play the guitar in the 1930s.

"The man had diamond buttons on his shirt. He took one off and gave it to Mom," Moe said.

Asked where the diamond is now, Dorian shows her hand, flashing an enormous diamond on a ring.

The family moved to Egypt, playing in Alexandria, then moving on to Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, Russia and Germany.

Everywhere they went, Moe insisted they live the life of local people. Soon they were picking up the customs and language of each country.

"I go to their house, I eat their food, by the time I leave, I speak their language," Moe said.

The family picked up languages like tourists collect postcards. Tau learned Hindu; everyone learned French, German and Italian.

In Paris, Tau worried that the Hawaiian craze would fade, so he beefed up the act.

"I learned tap dancing; Lani learned classical dance; Mom learned acrobatics," he said "Then at night we all came home and taught each other."

In 1938, the Moes met Adolf Hitler, and fellow Nazis Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels at a fund-raiser for German orphans. The irony was that Moe had many Jewish musician friends and used the family's German passports to smuggle many out of the country.

Moe tells one story about how Rose was helping to smuggle the possessions of his Austrian agent out of the country. "The guard wanted to know why Rose was wearing three fur coats. " 'I'm from Hawaii, so I get very cold,' she said."

The next year, the American Embassy warned Moe to leave Germany. The family moved to Beirut, where the Embassy again warned them that Italy had declared war.

"We had only a couple of hours to get a bus to Baghdad," Moe said "We spent days in the desert, no one had food. Luckily, I brought loaves of French bread - it was the only thing anybody on the bus had to eat for the four-day trip."

Moe spent World War II in India, leading an unlikely big band of musicians from a variety of countries, including China and Russia.

After the war, the Moes returned briefly to Hawaii, but by 1947, they were back on the road, playing first in California, then back to Europe.

They played Monte Carlo, Rome, Nice. They danced in the Moulin Rouge. They appeared in a show with Josephine Baker in Venice. They spent the winter in St. Moritz. They appeared with Maurice Chevalier.

"Those were good memories, those were the glamour days," Lani said.

Now Moe speaks quietly in Hawaiian to Rose who is humming on the couch.

"She still sings every night, you know," Tau said.