PANCY LAU (劉鳳屏) "水長流" (1968)

Pancy Lau (Lau Fung Ping, 劉鳳屏 or 刘鳳屏, also referred to as Liu Feng Ping) was born sometimes in the late 40s / early 50s in a family of musicians; her father (劉伯樂), a famous Cantonese Opera singer, was her very first music teacher.

At eight / nine years she was already performing operas, and at thirteeen / fourteen she began to explore Pop music. During the early 60s she participated in several singing contests with no significant results. In 1965 at last she won the Mandarin section of the 6th Sing Tao Daily singing competition with the song "三年" (Three Years). As a result of this success, she became a resident singer at the prestigious restaurant / nightclub 金冠 (Golden Crown).

Television Broadcasts Limited (電視廣播有限公司), commonly known as TVB, commenced broadcasting in Hong Kong on 19 November 1967. Pancy Lau was one of the first singers who participated in the popular show "歡樂今宵" (Enjoy Yourself Tonight) along with colleagues 仙杜拉 (Sandra Lang, one half of The Chopsticks duo along with 阿美娜 / Amina) and 鍾玲玲 (Betty Chung).

"水長流" (Water Always Flows) was released in 1968 by Fung Hang Records; it was the first in a long series of recordings that was about to continue for more than fifteen years.

For a more detailed biography of Pancy Lau I suggest that you read a previous post I dedicated to her here on Stereo Candies: "The Very Best of Pancy Lau Volume 1 [1968-72]".

Here's the track list for this 7" single:

01. 水長流 (2:28)
02. 不如不嫁了 (2:47)
03. 姑娘的心意 (2:00)
04. 我的心裡有個他 (2:09)

All tracks were remastered from vinyl in January 2013 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files, both formats include scans of the original item in PDF format. Please have a look at the comments for the download links.





All music on this release is played by 太陽神樂隊 (The Apollo), an Hong Kong prolific studio band that reached a cult status in the region during the late 60s / early 70s. Their name has probably been borrowed  from the Teisco / Kawai manufactured Apollo model guitar from that time period.

They recorded a lot of instrumental albums, a few of them for New Wave Record Co. (新風) and most of them for Life Records (麗風); they were also featured as a backing band on countless releases by popular singers like Teresa Teng (鄧麗君), Frances Yip (葉麗儀), Stella Chee (奚秀蘭) and Pancy Lau, of course.

Here's what I discovered searching information about the songs included on this release; the translations of the song titles are approximate in most cases, but anyway...:

01. "水長流" (Water Always Flows) originated from a 1959 Japanese song entitled "大川ながし" by 美空ひばり (Misora Hibari, available here). It was later translated into a Taiwanese song in 1967, "快樂的農家" and recorded by 陳芬蘭 (Chen Fen Lan, available here). The song was also recorded by 鄧麗君 (Teresa Teng, available here), 姚蘇蓉 (Yao Su Rong, here) and many others.

02. "不如不嫁了" (It Is Better Not To Marry) seems to be an original composition and I wasn't able to find any other information about it, except the name of its authors: music by 曹嘈 and words by 馮美葆.

03. "我的心裡有個他" (There Is Somebody In My Heart) was adapted from a Japanese song recorded by 翁倩玉 (Judy Ongg, available here) in 1967; it was also recorded by 鄧麗君 (Teresa Teng).

04. "姑娘的心意" (In the Heart of a Girl) is another adaptation of a song imported from Japan. The original was popularized by 美空ひばり (Misora Hibari, available here - the song begins at about 2:00); the Mandarin version was also successfully performed by 張露 (Chang Loo).

Pancy Lau, circa 1970

The following video offers a preview of the remastered single: "水長流" ("Water Always Flows"), enjoy!

More information about Pancy Lau is available here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Hong_Kong

http://home.ied.edu.hk/~hkpop/music/hkpophistory.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dk_gilbert/sets/72157608139056712/

http://www.goldenage.hk/b5/ga/ga_article.php?article_id=1079

http://paper.wenweipo.com/2007/04/21/EN0704210024.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUIeOiDudhg&feature=related

http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/vinyl-history/article?mid=42&l=f&fid=12

http://www.funghang.com/200610/asp/disc_list.asp?class1=6&singer=%E5%8A%89%E9%B3%B3%E5%B1%8F

http://blog.roodo.com/muzikland/archives/2578425.html

http://baike.baidu.com/view/5637119.htm

http://www.vinylparadise.com/4pop_can/1/066LFP0A.htm

http://www.inkui.com/a1/A/A4A8B8CB7ABE6FF6C1CF_a.html

http://robokon.orgfree.com/5080/5080_LauFungPing.htm

http://mypaper.pchome.com.tw/chrishui/post/1276979467

http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/%E5%8A%89%E9%B3%B3%E5%B1%8F

http://www.whatsinmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1004%3A2012-04-02-19-44-12&catid=75%3A2012-03-30-21-17-42&lang=tw

I'm currently trying to compile a Pancy Lau exhaustive discography, my work-in-progress is available here.

All my posts dedicated to Pancy Lau on this blog are available here.

In the next months I will post more Hong Kong/Taiwan/Singapore/etc. Pop/Instrumental records released in the late-60s / mid-70s. As usual, I would like to provide information about these releases and their authours, here's a few names: 劉鳳屏 (Pancy Lau), 太陽神樂隊 (The Apollo), 麗莎 (Lisa Wong), 冉肖玲 (Ran Xiao Ling), 鄧麗君 (Teresa Teng), 奧斯卡管弦樂團 (Oscar Orchestra)...

Unfortunately the Internet doesn't offer much information - written in English - about these artists and this is the reason why I need help: if you can translate from Chinese to English please get in touch with me at stereocandies [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment in the box below, thank you so much!

It's been difficult to obtain these vinyls, some are not in the best conditions and I'm currently working hard to properly master them. It seems that these artists and their music are poorly known in the West, of course it's a real pity because they made stunning releases: I'd like to share them with you with a proper presentation, hope that someone will be able to help.