City Beat

A while back, I mentioned that the likes of Metro - four gwailos singing in Cantonese - haven't been seen in Hong Kong since the days of City Beat. This is City Beat introducing their own video of Tolo Johnny, probably on Fizz Bizz in 1988. Tolo Johnny came out on their first album, which was interesting because side one had five Cantonese songs and side two had the same five songs in English. I believe City Beat never mixed languages in a song, but eventually they released most of their songs in both Cantonese and English versions. The guy you see introducing the video is John Laudon, who is the only one of the four still in Hong Kong, where he still works in the church and the music business. A year or so ago we did an interview with John, where he has a lot of interesting things to say about City Beat and singing in Cantonese.

Os Mutantes - Baby

This is inspired by my favourite radio DJ, Vicky on WFMU's Do or DIY with People Like Us, who played an English version of Baby by Fantastic Plastic Machine on her first show of 2010. Like me, Vicky has a penchant for singers who use English as their second language. Here are the originals by Os Mutantes in Portuguese and English. Baby was written by Caetano Veloso (I believe he wrote both sets of lyrics) and both versions here are sung by Rita Lee.

The lyrics don't make much sense in either language because they were meant to be a parody of a certain kind of Brazilian middle class culture that was around at the time. The line It's time now to learn Portuguese... is a kind of mirror translation of Você precisa aprender inglês... (You need to learn English). There is an interesting New York Times article on Caetano Veloso's use of English on Caetano's website. It says that the Baby, baby, I love you that ends the song is a quote from Paul Anka's Diana, which is not exactly true because that line isn't in Diana. But I guess he quoted the melody.

Metro

Here is something not seen since the days of City Beat - four gwailos singing in Cantonese. This is a cover of a Joey Yung song and, in fact, they start in English and then switch to Cantonese, which I believe City Beat never did.

It seems Metro used be The Dapper Dans of Main Street, a barbershop quartet performing at Hong Kong Disneyland. This doesn't necessarily mean there are now no Dapper Dans at Disneyland. It is more of a franchise performing at several parks, and even in different parts of the same park at the same time. There must be a name for that kind of group - wish I knew what it was.

Japanese English Pop 4 - Betty Inada

A while back I wrote about Japanese-English bilingual songs in the early '50s. Here's one from further back still - Betty Inada singing Happy Days Are Here Again (1929) first in Japanese and then in English. Betty Inada was a nisei (second generation Japanese) who came over from San Francisco and was in on the start of the 1930s jazz boom. There were numerous bilingual recordings in the 1930s and I guess this was one of the first.

Japanese English pop 2 - Yukimura Izumi

Another find from Carolyn Stevens' great book on Japanese Popular Music. Our research has Grace Chang's, I Want You To Be My Baby as the first Hong Kong song with English lyrics (the verses alternate between English and Chinese) somewhere towards the end of the fifties. Now I know that this goes back further in Japan. Carolyn Stevens mentions Eri Chiemi, Tennessee Waltz (1952) and Yukimura Izumi, Blue Canary (1954). This is Yukimura Izumi doing Alice In Wonderland in 1953 - a magical 'sandwich' with English on the outside and Japanese in the middle.