Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's new album "Wonderful World" debuted at No. 44 on The Billboard 200 this week, a ranking that wowed the The Mountain Apple Co. executives. The record label reports that it has flown in emergency shipments twice to meet demand since the album was released June 26.

"Wonderful World" also debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's World Album chart and No. 3 on its Independent Album chart.

Geoff Mayfield, a senior analyst for Billboard, said it was the highest debut by a Hawaiian album or a Hawaiian artist. The only album close to that was Don Ho's 1966 "Tiny Bubbles," which debuted much lower but ultimately climbed to 15 on the charts, he said.

"For any kind of indigenous music, this is an incredibly strong start and particularly if you are talking about a person who has not been personally able to participate in the promotion of his music," Mayfield said.

The album, which sets Kamakawiwo'ole's angelic voice and distinctive 'ukulele strumming to a symphonic score, was released on the 10th anniversary of his death.

The rankings are based on U.S. sales tallied by Nielsen SoundScan between June 25 and July 1. Nielsen monitors the number of times an album is scanned at selected check-out lines.

But the 17,000 albums Nielsen counted last week represent less than half of total sales for "Wonderful World," Mountain Apple estimates, because many of the stores that have stocked Kamakawiwo'ole's work, such as Longs Drugs, do not participate in the Nielsen survey.

"We are selling everywhere," said Leah Bernstein, president of Mountain Apple. "I really believe we sold more like 25,000 to 30,000 last week."

About 60 percent of the sales of "Wonderful World" have been in Hawai'i, where demand for the album was immediate. Mountain Apple emptied the shelves of its Honolulu warehouse within the first 24 hours.

"We were delivering to the same stores two and three times," Bernstein said. "We had every single body in this place packing, shipping or driving."

Thousands of additional copies were flown in and delivered to stores Friday, but a second shipment had to be ordered Monday, Bernstein said.

Although she would not discuss specific numbers, Bernstein said the label had "shipped out six figures" worth of CDs to outlets nationwide before its release and ordered an additional 25 percent. The second shipment was about the same size.

"It is the biggest shipment we ever had on an initial release," she said.

Albums were sent to more than a thousand Hawai'i outlets and tens of thousands of outlets on the Mainland.

Bob Ingersoll, a group vice president and Hawai'i regional manager for Longs, said he offered to drive a delivery van the day the album was released if that would get more albums to his stores.

"Within the first few hours of the first day, we knew we under-ordered," he said. "That's when I called up and offered to drive a van."

Longs had ordered "significantly more" albums than it has in the past, Ingersoll said.

"It was all selfish, of course," he said. "I just wanted to be sure my stores had product."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.