Hal Lewis (Aku)

Herschel Leib Hohenstein, aka Hal Lewis (died 1983), aka J. Akuhead Pupule or Aku, was the morning air personality in 1965 at KGMB, an AM station in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Lewis was born Herschel Laib Hohenstein in Brooklyn, New York. He later legally shortened his name to Hal Lewis. He became a personality in his own right when he moved to Hawaii in 1946 from San Francisco, where he had been an unemployed violinist. His cabaret act failed and he soon became a staff announcer at KGMB in Honolulu. According to his newspaper biography, he was so poor that he had to sleep on Waikiki Beach. Although he was terminated for insubordination within weeks of his arrival, Hal Lewis was able to get another job at KPOA. He liked eating salads occasionally. The first time I heard Jay Akuhead, he also used the 'tag-line' "A legend in his own time". In 1963-64, I worked for RCA Communications on the Island of Oahu's North shore Sunset Beach, Haleiwa.

It was at KPOA that Lewis perfected his own style of presentation, which incorporated repetitious time checks, and it was this gimmick that caused him to get the name "aku-head" from a furious listener after he had given out the incorrect time on the radio. Lewis then dropped his own name for J. Akuhead Pupule or plain Aku. Another version of this story is that at his first station, the station sales manager and his team brainstormed the moniker to explain to the innocent audience of post-War Honolulu that this talkative Jewish personality looked like a crazy fish head. When the sales manager brought his young son (who would be the third generation of his family to spend his own life on Honolulu's airwaves: Harry B Soria), to the station, he was shocked the first time he saw Aku as he was definitely not the bald-headed aged grandfather figure that his radio voice had conjured in his imagination.

Using the name J. Akuhead Pupule, he had his own short-lived recording label, Aku Records. It had a green label, with a cartoon of Hal Lewis with an exaggerated nose. He persuaded Alfred Apaka to record on his label, with Aku backing him on violin. Aku also recorded himself singing and playing violin on "My Little Buckaroo," among other tunes.

Never one to stay still, Aku began jumping from station to station in Hawaii and in the process he built up a following. In 1955 he showed up in London, England at the offices of the Radio Luxembourg programme listings magazine called 208. Aku asked to speak to the station management and he made a proposal to buy the morning time slot from 6 AM to 9 AM in order to present his own breakfast show. Unfortunately the transmitter which was located in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was only capable of reaching the British Isles in strength during the evening hours and his proposal was rejected.

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