Warren Barker and His Orchestra

 Artist: Warren Barker and His Orchestra

LP: William Holden Presents a Musical Touch of Far Away Places

Song: "Junk City Hong Kong"

[ listen ]

Here are some exotic sounds from the Orient, courtesy of orchestra leader Warren Barker, actor William Holden, and producer Bill Stewart. The song "Junk City Hong Kong" should conjure up images of a city filled with this kind of junk, of course, rather than this kind or even this kind, and it features lots of unusual instruments that were dragged up out of Bill Holden's basement. He found some of them while making the film LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING, which features Holden as a war correspondent stationed in China who falls in love with a beautiful-but-practical "Eurasian" nurse, played by Jennifer Jones. Incidentally, I just watched the film last week, and it's a real four-hankie sudser—sort of an ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS set in Hong Kong. As for Warren Barker, he was born in Oakland, California in 1923, studied at UCLA, then worked in film and television for many years. He's the genius behind that little tinkling xylophone sound whenever Samantha wiggles her nose to work some magical mischief on "Bewitched," and he also wrote the "I'm a Little Bit Country, I'm a Little Bit Rock-n-Roll" theme song for "The Donny & Marie Show." You can read more about Warren Barker on the Space Age Pop website here, and read William Holden's notes for Barker's 1959 "Far Away Places" LP below. And speaking of far away places, I'll be galavanting around Ohio for the next few weeks, visiting a bunch of charmingly rusty old cities while gathering up the Buckeye State's most thrilling, unusual, and reasonably-priced records along the way. I'll be back in mid-August to share all the wonderful things I've found.

[ Warren Barker: April 16, 1923 — August 3, 2006 ]

Poon Sow Keng

Artist: Poon Sow Keng

LP: Popular Songs In Mandarin Chinese by the Orient's Favorite Vocalist

Song: "I Could Hardly Give Him Up"
[ listen ]

Here's a pretty song from a 1960s Poon Sow Keng (or "Pan Xiu Qiong") record I found at a shop just a few blocks from my house. You can read a little about Poon Sow Keng in this blog tribute—where the author calls her ugly and says her songs are popular in Chinese restaurants. Now retired from the limelight, Poon Sow Keng invites senior citizens to volunteerism, as you can see here, and performs at poorly-videotaped Christian festivals like this one. To see Poon Sow Keng lit from head to toe by the aforementioned limelight, go here, where you'll see her perform her beautiful hit, "A Lover's Tears," in the 1964 movie THE LARK. Notes from the back of the LP:

A MALAYAN by birth, the beautiful and immensely popular Poon
Sow Keng has been singing since she was 12 years old.

At 17, she recorded for the first time. Within weeks, her name
was known throughout Southeast Asia.

But for all her popularity, and today she is unquestionably
one of the most popular singers in the entire area, Poon Sow
Keng has never had a lesson in singing. What talent
she has is God-given.

She sings in Mandarin Chinese. She is particularly successful
in Singapore and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya.

Here are brief notes on each song, all of which were
recorded by EMI in Asia:

I COULD HARDLY GIVE HIM UP—She longed to see him,
yet when she did she was unable to say anything—and
when she eventually spoke, he failed to respond.
A song of frustration.