Louis Keouli Thompson
Louis Keouli Thompson aka Segis Luvaun
Background information
Birth name	Louis Thompson
Also known as	Segis Luvaun
Born	(1882-04-22)April 22, 1882 Honolulu, Oahu, Kingdom of Hawai'i
Died	(1937-07-15)July 15, 1937 Kittanning, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Genres	Hawaiian Folk
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals, Ukulele, Steel Guitar, Violin
Years active	1900–1922

Louis Keouli Thompson (April 22, 1882 – July 15, 1937), better known by his stage name Segis Luvaun, was a Hawaiian singer and musician and the reported King of Ukulele Players.^[1] Thompson, native to Hawai'i, claimed United States citizenship when Hawaii was annexed by the United States as a territory in 1898. He performed much of his life, first touring the United States and later throughout Scandinavia and Europe, many times for Royalty.^[1]

Personal life

Louis Thompson was born in Honolulu in the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1882. The earliest known record of him is the 1900 census^[2] showing him as a 17-year-old student at the Kamehameha School, then known as the Kamehameha School for Boys. Indeed, Thompson is shown in the school's Class of 1900 class photo.^[3] The 1900 census shows both his parents being from the Hawaiian Islands. A 1919 Visa application, filled out by Thompson, records his father's name as Keouli Tawmsen^[4] and a 1916 Visa application indicated that his father was deceased at that time.^[5] However, on the marriage license to Eveline Walters (shown below), indicates his father's name is 'Carlo Luvaun'.^[6] No other information is known about his family.

Thompson married Mildred Elnora Rupp on July 26, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois.^[7] At the time, Thompson went by Lu, with his full name on the marriage license recorded as Lu Kaoly Thompson. Rupp was born on October 26, 1893, in Winfield, Kansas.^[8] Although Thompson was actually 28 and Rupp was 17 at the time, the marriage license shows them as 26 and 21, respectively. He and Rupp had one child, Billven Keouli Thompson, born December 16, 1911, in Topeka, Kansas. Billven is Thompson's only known child.

Sometime after marrying Rupp in 1910 and before leaving for Europe in 1914, Thompson married Moana.^[6] Although little is known about Moana, including her maiden name, one might speculate that she was the inspiration behind Thompson's chart 'Moana Waltz'.

Thompson married Eveline Walters on April 7, 1917, in St. Giles, London, England. At this time, Thompson was 35 and Walters was 21.^[6] She was born on September 11, 1896, in Somersetshire, England.^[9] and her father's name was Gaius Walters^[6]

Within three years (1903) of graduating from Kamehameha School for Boys, Thompson had already left his homeland of Hawai'i for the mainland of the United States.^[3] He toured there for ten years before moving to London in 1914. In 1919, he moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. By 1922, he once again moved, this time to Prague, Czechoslovakia. His last known residence in Europe, per Visa applications, was Riga, Latvia. He remained in Europe until September 1936 when he returned to the United States sailing from Marseille to Boston. He died of heart failure in a Pennsylvania hospital, on July 15, 1937.

Career

Much of Thompson's career has been gathered through newspaper ads and articles, as well as mentions in books about the Hawaiian music movement at the time. According to Kamehameha School archives, Thompson had left for the United States mainland by 1902 or 1903. Several articles show him touring in the United States as early as 1907 and as late as 1913. In his book How to Play the Ukulele, Thompson records that he was discovered in 1912 while touring in the United States by Sir Walter de Freece, who brought him to Europe. Tracking his travels through passport and visa applications shows that he lived and performed in locations such as London, Oslo, Copenhagen, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland from 1914 to 1931.

Stage Names

Thompson appears to have been very prolific with his epithet. Although there is no record of why he chose different aliases, he chose both unique names and spellings at different times in his career. Below is a list of names he was known to use.

• Juan Akoni
• L. Thompson
• Lewis Thompson
• Louis K Thompson
• Lu Kaoly Thompson
• Lu Keouli Thompson
• Luvaun
• Luvaun Tawmsen
• San Juan^[12]
• Segis Luvaun

Discography

Publications

• Book, How to Play the Ukulele, by Luvaun, London, Ascherberg, Hopwood & Crew, Ltd. (1926), [MT645.L9;]
• Sheet Music, Hawaiian Onestep, für Salonorchester, by Segis Luvaun, arr. von B. Bernards; für Pianoforte, arr. von Kurt Lubbe, Lepizig Publishing House, Germany, c 1919–1923.^[12]
• Sheet Music, Moana. Hawaiian Waltz, by Luvaun. Amsterdam Frederiksplein, Louis Noiret Music Publishing Company. 1922.

Notes

References

• Luvaun, How to Play the Ukulele, London, Ascherberg, Hopwood & Crew, Ltd. (1926), [MT645.L9;]
• The Hawaiian Gazette, March 2, 1909, "Hawaiian Singers in the Empire State", Honolulu, Hawaii, pg. 7.
• The Segis Luvaun Bio-Discography, Rainer E. Lotz, Rugby/England, The International Talking Machine Review, 77, Spring 1990, pp. 2255–2259.