To You Sweetheart, Aloha

Hawaiian Wedding Song is a reissue of the Cadence Records album To You Sweetheart, Aloha. In February 1959, Andy Williams hit the Top Ten with "The Hawaiian Wedding Song." On August 21 of the same year, Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States. These were events that clearly called for an album of Hawaiian music from Williams, and this was it. It was becoming clear that Archie Bleyer, head of Cadence Records, saw himself as the equivalent of Decca's Jack Kapp and Williams as the new Bing Crosby, and he adopted the same approach Kapp had taken with Crosby 20 years earlier, pushing his singer to try a variety of types of music, including Hawaiian music. In fact, several of these titles, notably "Blue Hawaii" and "Sweet Leilani," had first been recorded by Crosby. Bleyer eschewed the usual practice of employing traditional Hawaiian instruments and importing the islands' musicians, settling instead for Hawaiian-styled arrangements played by a standard orchestra. But what mattered was Williams' typically warm vocal interpretations, which made the album a romantic touchstone. After Williams decamped for Columbia Records in 1961, he acquired the masters of his Cadence recordings, and in the spring of 1965 Columbia repackaged To You Sweetheart, Aloha as Hawaiian Wedding Song, at which time it belatedly reached the charts, getting into the Top 100 and remaining listed more than four months.