DON HO: MY MUSIC MY LIFE
Jerry's new book, DON HO: MY MUSIC MY LIFE, a lavishly illustrated hardcover memoir/biography of Hawaiian music legend Don Ho, will be published in December.

In his introduction to the book, Jerry writes:

"In the early Summer of 2006, Don Ho employed two young women to record and transcribe some of the stories of his life. The idea was that the two-hundred-plus, double-spaced pages that resulted might be used in a book or provide background material for a film. When it was determined that more work was required, in the Spring of 2007 Don sat patiently for numerous additional interviews in what turned out to be---to the day---the final month of his life. In fact, some of Don's recollections of his early days in Waikiki were recorded as he relaxed with his wife Haumea and friends following what turned out to be his last performance. I left for my home in Thailand the next morning and before my plane landed, he had died.

"During those last weeks, many others were interviewed along with Don---family, friends, entertainers, business associates, even his physicians---the goal being to create an autobiography, illustrated with material selected from the Don Ho archives.

"What follows is not told in the usual manner for autobiography, wherein the subject tells his or her story in a first person narrative, either alone or with a professional writer's assistance. It is, rather, a kind of oral history of the man's life, a stitching together of memories shared in interviews, with the predominant voice being Don Ho's, accompanied by supporting voices, arranged chronologically. In other words, what follows is mostly pure, unadulterated Don Ho, complemented by the recollections of the same events and times by others who were there with him. When Don recalls his days as a boarding student at Kamehameha Schools, so too do his schoolmates; when Don talks about starting out at his mom's bar and restaurant, Honey's, Marlene Sai tells how she was discovered there. When I suggested this format to Don, I called it a "modern Hawaiian quilt." He approved it.

"Donald Tai Loy Ho was born of Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and German heritage on August 13, 1930, in Kaka'ako and he died seventy-six years later, on April 14, 2007, in a house that he figured he would never finish tinkering with at Diamond Head. He quarterbacked a championship football team, earned a degree in sociology from the University of Hawaii, flew jets for the U.S. Air Force, fathered ten children, was given credit for electing at least one Hawaii governor, more than a decade ahead of Jimmy Buffett took the laid-back tropical lifestyle worldwide through his recordings and appearances both on television and in concert, and along the way became Hawaii's best-known and most beloved personality of all time.

"He also became the longest running act in Waikiki, a must-see performer for Hawaii residents and tourists alike for nearly half a century. Finally, in an effort to extend that amazing life after being flattened by a malfunctioning heart and conventional treatment failed, he made history by flying to Bangkok for experimental stem cell surgery that was forbidden in the United States, returning to the Waikiki stage soon afterward.

"Headline writers called him 'Mr. Hawaii' and 'The King of Waikiki.' His good friend Jimmy Borges said, 'When you think of Hawaii, there's Pearl Harbor, Waikiki Beach, Diamond Head, and Don Ho.' Another friend, Brickwood Galuteria, said, 'Sun, sand, surf, Don Ho.'

"Don, of course, would've quoted a song by his friend Kui Lee: "Ain't no big thing, bruddah." More than most of us could dare or dream, Don Ho enjoyed life to da max…yet by his unquestioned status as a cultural icon, and by the fact that he probably was better known than Diamond Head, he seemed totally unimpressed."

Published by Watermark Publishing in Honolulu, DON HO: MY LIFE, MY MUSIC is Jerry's 36th book and his third this year. Two earlier works were ALOHA ELVIS, from Honolulu's Bess Press, and ELVIS: THE BIOGRAPHY, from Plexus Publishing in London.

A Memoir: "Not Same Bangkok"
Jerry has written a personal memoir, the story of his first ten years in Thailand, a romantic adventure that tells of his life in Bangkok's notorious bars, where he met a woman who became his wife. Jerry and Lamyai built a house in her home village an eight-hour train ride from Bangkok alongside a rice field that he claims is about "half the size of France." An exaggeration, he admits, but he says everything in the book is true, telling how a country girl went to the city and met a city boy and took him to the country, where he felt he had fallen asleep and waked up in the middle of a Discovery Channel documentary.

"This," Jerry says, "is what happened. To me. To Lamyai. To the large Thai family I married into and now live with. And to the poor village of which I'm now a part."

Jerry says that the book also reveals for the first time the facts about Thailand's infamous sex industry and its links to rural life and its economy. "There may not be a village anywhere in northern and northeastern Thailand, the poorest parts of the country, where there isn't a house built by a foreigner, or a household dependent on a foreigner's financial contribution," Jerry says. "The government doesn't deny this, it merely refuses to acknowledge it. Sex may be Thailand's Number One "export", the Number One source of its---forgive the pun---hard currency, and that's why it's a growth industry."

Details will be announced soon.

UNPUBLISHED BOOKS

The Condom
Its Life And Hard Times: illustrated history

Raquel
A Biography Of Raquel Welch

Fasi, Hemmeter, Rewald, Wyland (& Me)
Profiles Of Hawaii Celebrities

The Hmong:
An Illustrated Ethnographic History Of The Hilltribe