Jan. 5, 1974: Buffalo's one and only Hawaiian band -- the 3 V's

 

These excursions back into the 1970s sometimes seem like visits to an alternate universe, but few have been quite so otherworldly as this one. 

Jan. 5, 1974 

3 V’s Warm the Audience With Hawaiian Songs 

AROUND ABOUT the billiards parlor (hotel guests only), you start to suspect that the Sheraton East is maybe something more than mere shelter from the ice and elements out there on Walden Avenue near the Thruway.

          Those cueball wizards in the picture frames, the fuzzy wallpaper in robber baron red, the etched glass windows in imitation Sarah Bernhardt.

          Unconsciously, you twirl your moustache into a pair of waxed stilettos and flex the garters on your striped sleeves. Bring on that robot, the one they call Minnesota Fats …

          But that, my friend, is small-time escapism. Let us step around the corner to the Pool Room, the name of which hardly hints at the fantasy within.

          You feel like the gent in Firesign Theater. Push a button and land in a Tropical Paradise.

* * *

HERE ARE SUITES and rooms and balconies around a courtyard with a retractable glass dome. A swimming pool, $40,000 in equatorial plants. A fountain. A bar under a thatched hut and falling on the hut, a gentle, mechanical monsoon. Ladies in long dresses, kids in swimsuits wet from the pool. Like some Pacific Island. Hawaii.

          It could use soft yellow lights instead of those white ones. And maybe $10,000 in hanging vegetation. But still you can almost imagine the strains of steel guitar.

          In fact, that IS steel guitar. Playing “Sweet Leilani.” The monsoon has been turned off. The fountain is dry, converted into a bandstand.

* * *

AND ON STAGE is a trio that looks like it’s fresh from a Clint Buehlman package tour to Honolulu. Floral shirts, white beachcomber pants, leis. That’s Curt Vallett on steel guitar, his younger brother Malvin on bass and jolly Ralf Vandette doing rhythm guitar.

          Nor does Hawaii stop here, as it turns out. Down the hall in the Yesterday Room is a high-powered young show band called the Laughing Kahunas that actually hails from Hawaii. No floral shirts for them. Not much “Sweet Lailani” either.

* * *

“WE WANT TO give people a flavor of what Hawaii is today,” says Michael Salazar, vocalist, trumpet player and spokesman for the band. “It’s not much different from what Buffalo is.”

          Onstage the Kahunas seem less like what’s thought to be Hawaiian than the 3 V’s, although only one of them – Curt – has ever been to the islands. It’s doubtful Malvin and Ralf will get there. Their wives don’t care to travel.

          “I went to Hawaii twice,” says Curt. “Once about 1963-64 and a year ago last March I went out there again. I like the place and besides, I learn things.

          “I bought a lot of sheet music, stuff you can’t get here. I went to the ‘Hawaii Calls’ radio show. I met Billy Hulen, who plays all the luaus, and I stayed at the Outrigger Hotel.”

* * *

RALF ORDERS a beer and Malvin quietly asks for ginger ale, a sentiment seconded by voluble brother Curt.

          “I’ve got high blood pressure,” Curt explains. “If I drink, I feel my pulse in my fingertips.”

          He rubs his fingertips.

          “Here,” he says, “I want to show you this.”

          It’s a yellowed bridal book with a clipping inside about a trio of boys with Hawaiian guitars winning a Buffalo Evening News amateur contest Oct. 10, 1935. The 3 V’s, Curt says, have been together 30 years.

          “When my brother and I were kids at home in Cheektowaga, we were playin’,” says Curt. “Especially Hawaiian music we liked.

* * *

“I GOT THE idea from a carnival that came to town. They had this guy who played steel guitar and sang Hawaiian music so beautiful. I was about 10 and I said when I grow up that’s what I wanta play.”

          Ralf, who comes from Dunkirk, joined them in the early ‘30s. A year after the amateur show, they had a flash of fame – an appearance on the Major Bowes radio show broadcast coast to coast from Radio City Music Hall.

          But soon they were back in Buffalo, playing popular songs in night clubs – three years at the Woodlawn Hotel, two years at the Hamburg hotel.

          “We played all the pop tunes,” Curt says, “which are the good old standard tunes you hear now.”

* * *

TV AND ROCK ‘n roll knocked them out of the night clubs. The 3 V’s settled back to being the only Hawaiian band in the area, practicing Thursday nights in Malvin’s big basement and picking up an occasional wedding, luau or Masonic party.

          Curt gives private guitar lessons. Malvin works for the American Motors regional parts warehouse. And Ralf retired last year as a sandblaster at East Delavan Monumental Works. All are around 60 now. Malvin is a grandfather. Curt’s son, Dennis, plays bass behind Diane Taber in the Yesterday Room between sets by the Kahunas.

          Lately summers have gotten busy for the 3 V’s. Fire halls, country clubs, yacht clubs, sometimes two or three offers for the same day. They’ve played the St. John Gualbert Church picnic for 10 years. The Clinton Street Businessmen’s Association picnic for 13.

* * *

“WE APPEAL TO people in the 35 to 45 age bracket,” Curt exclaims. “The kids, they say can’t you play something with some jump. I’d rather stay home than be confronted with that.”

          Booking agent Joe Bongi Jr. found them for the Sheraton, where they’ve done Friday and Saturday nights since November, their first steady date in years.

          So far they’ve played without their hula dancers, who are optional at extra cost. Paulette Skibniewski, who’s married and has a young daughter and a dance studio in Cheektowaga that bears her name, has danced with them for almost six years. Cheryl Cipressi, who’s 18 and one of Paulette’s assistant teachers, has hulaed for two years.

          “No, my husband doesn’t mind,” Paulette laughs. “He knows how much dancing means to me. You wonder what people are going to think at first, but after a few shows you get used to it.”

* * *

MUSICALLY, the 3 V’s are, in a word, mellow. “Blue Hawaii,” “Little Grass Shack” and, for excitement, “Hawaiian War Chant.” They have a country music beat and smooth three-part harmony, Ralf singing lead with a deep Al Jolson warble.

          On the way out, you can hear the Laughing Kahunas through the closed door of the Yesterday Room. Pua, pretty as her name, is wailing “Tears on My Pillow.” The Hawaiians are in the middle of their old rock ‘n roll set.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Steel guitarist Curt Vallett, left; bass guitarist Malvin Vallett, center, and guitarist Ralf Vandette. The dancers are Cheryl Cipressi, left, and Paulette Skibniewski.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Curt Vallett turns up a couple times in a Billboard magazine roundup of Folk Talent and Tunes in 1953, playing steel guitar with Lee Forster and his Barn Dance Gang every Wednesday in the Capitol Theater in Niagara Falls and for square dancing Friday nights in the Ellicott Manor in Lancaster. He died in 1995, two years after his brother Malvin. Ralf Vandette passed away in 1978.

The Laughing Kahunas put out a self-titled CD and can be heard in performance in the 1970s on YouTube. Very successful on the nightclub circuit in Hawaii, this gig at the Sheraton may have come along after they moved to the mainland.

Dancer Paulette Skibniewski now lives on a big patch of country property in Cattaraugus County that she and her husband always dreamed of having. She closed her dance studio in 1999.

That Sheraton East, which was brand new then, is now the Millennium Buffalo Hotel, which sits on the doorstep of the Walden Galleria shopping mall. No mall in those days. It didn’t open until 1989.