(Okay - admit it: When's the last time you heard Hawaiian guitars?)

I don't know about you, but here we are in the dead of summer where it's 90+ degrees with 90+ percent humidity and the only thing I want to do is go vacant in front of a large air-conditioner and imagine balmy breezes and tiki bars.

So naturally, my fingers wandered over to a stack of Hawaiian 78's, recorded in the 1950's by the great Rudi Wairata and The Mena Moeria Minstrels.

You probably haven't heard of them. And to tell you the truth, neither had I until a few years ago when I got a collection of 78's from a friend in Europe.

It seems The Mena Moeria Minstrels were a combination Dutch Indonesian and Hawaiian and were pretty big in Europe, apart from their popularity on the Islands, and these discs were put out by a Dutch company Omega Records in 1953.

Aside from the historic aspect, I was hooked on this track "Maui Moon" after the first few bars.

The 1950's were loaded with a lot of interesting (and some downright strange) music, aside from the flood of rock n' roll and R&B. Not a whole lot of it has been explored and some of it has been unjustifiably neglected.

This might be one of them.