Bud Tutmarc is a world renowned Hawaiian steel guitar player. He recorded over 25 albums from the 1960s to the 1980s. He toured throughout America, Europe, Asia, and Austrailia many times.
He eventually owned and operated his own studio, Tutmarc-Summit Studios, where he produced many albums for other artists. In addition to his recording and performing careers, Bud manufactured electric steel guitars. Both his guitars and his father’s pioneering electric guitar inventions are featured at the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle.
He played up until a few years preceding his death in 2006 in Seattle.
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Sol Hoopii is widely regarded as the greatest Hawaiian steel guitar player.
Born in 1902, the youngest of twenty-one children from Honolulu, Hawaii, he came to the mainland in 1919 as a stowaway in an ocean liner to San Francisco, California and later began recording in Los Angeles.
Sol Hoopii's Novelty Trio often mixed jazz and blues with traditional Hawaiian music. The distinctively rhythmic slide techniques he invented later influenced country music steel guitarists.
He appeared in a few movies, such as Waikiki Wedding (1937) with Bing Crosby and some Charlie Chan films.
He joined the crusade of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1938, and from then on made few music recordings until his death in 1953 in Seattle.