A LUSH ESCAPE INTO ISLAND RHYTHMS AND GENTLE LONGING
In “LOVELY HULA HANDS” by Marty Robbins, a shimmering Hawaiian reverie unfolds—where the gentle arc of a dancer’s arms becomes a metaphor for wistful yearning and cinematic escapism. Recorded for his 1963 album Hawaii’s Calling Me, this track stands apart from Robbins’s better-known frontier ballads, offering instead a soft‐toned tropical dreamscape. While the song did not make a significant commercial splash on the country singles charts (no chart placement is prominently documented), it remains a noteworthy pivot in Robbins’s artistic trajectory—a moment when the celebrated country troubadour embraced the “hapa haole” (Hawaiian-popular) idiom and allowed his voice to wander toward palm-shaded evenings and trade-wind breezes.
What makes “Lovely Hula Hands” so quietly fascinating is its origin and Robbins’s interpretive touch. The song itself was composed by R. Alex Anderson—one of Hawaii’s finest hapa haole songwriters—who reportedly penned the lyric after overhearing the remark, “aren’t her hands lovely?” as a dancer swayed under tropical lights. That origin embeds the piece with the kind of ephemeral beauty that Robbins loved to inhabit: a fleeting glance, a subtle gesture, the mood between music and memory. Robbins’s decision to record it in 1963 reflects both his deep curiosity for islands beyond the American west and his willingness to stretch stylistically while retaining the emotional sincerity for which he was known.
Musically the track is elegant in its simplicity. Robbins’s voice floats above a backdrop of steel guitar, soft ukulele-like strumming, and a rhythm that mimics the slight sway of waves rather than the stomp of the honky-tonk hall. There’s a luminous warmth in the arrangement that invites the listener into a quiet twilight. Lyric after lyric evokes imagery rather than narrative drama: the sunset glow, scented sea air, and the gentle, hypnotic motion of hands in hula—hands which are “lovely” not only in sight, but in the memory they evoke. The ambiguity of the gesture—are they bidding farewell or beckoning toward the horizon?—adds to the track’s charm.
In the broader arc of Robbins’s career, the song exemplifies his ability to transport: he could sing about deserts, cowboys, border towns or, in this case, ocean breezes and island dreams. Music historians note that his interest in Hawaiian styles was more than a novelty; he recorded entire themed albums like Hawaii’s Calling Me and Island Woman to explore the very idea of place and escape. While “Lovely Hula Hands” may not have become a chart-topping hit, its legacy is subtle yet enduring. For aficionados of Robbins and lovers of mid-20th-century exotica‐tinged popular music, it remains a jewel: a song that invites you to pause, close your eyes, and drift for a moment toward palm-fringed waters and the soft rhythm of memory.
In hearing “Lovely Hula Hands,” one hears more than the voice of Marty Robbins—one hears a man mid-career, confident enough to wander off the beaten trail, gentle enough to linger in the shade of a coconut tree, and precise enough to render a single image—hands gliding, sea gleaming, night settling—in a few lyrical strokes. The result: not just a song, but a moment of musical escape, a breath of tropical air captured in vinyl.