PANCY LAU (劉鳳屏) "你幾時回家" (1969)

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 Lau Bak Lok (劉伯樂) - also known as Tin Ngai (天涯) - was a well-known Cantonese Opera Star. He was her very first music teacher, and guided her through the entertainment world.

Her career started when she was around 8 or 9 years old singing Cantonese Opera. As a teenager she transitioned to singing songs she enjoyed: Pop music. During the early 60s she participated two times in the Sing Tao Daily Singing Competition in Hong Kong with no significant results. In 1965 at last she won the Mandarin section of the 6th edition of the contest with the song "三年" (Three Years). Upon winning the competition, she became a resident singer at the prestigious Golden Crown Night Club (金冠).

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 musical artists who participated in the popular show "歡樂今宵" (Enjoy Yourself Tonight), which was the longest running variety show in Hong Kong's television history.

In 1968 Fung Hang Records released her debut album entitled "My Heart Is Beating - 我的心蹦蹦跳". The album was the first in a long series of recordings that continued for more than fifteen years.

Following two EPs entitled "水長流" ("Water Flows Long") and "山前山後百花开" ("When the Flowers Bloom On Mount Qian Shan"), Pancy Lau's second album was finally published in late 1969. "快回頭望一望" ("Quickly Take a Look Behind"), contained twelve songs, including the eight tracks already released on her previous EPs.

The record was a huge success with no less than four editions published - and sometimes also bootlegged - by different labels in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. At the time, a lot of popular music was coming from being featured on television or were theme songs from television drama series. The album, however, did not need any push from the media to become an instant hit, as it contained enough fresh material to estabilish itself as a modern classic.

It's not easy to come up with an exact chronology of Pancy Lau's early output because in a few years she released many records and none of them includes a release date... I easily guess that FHEP1007 "你幾時回家" (When Will You Come Home?), the subject of this post, was released after FHEP1001, but I'm not sure if the year was 1969 or 1970... As a matter of fact, all the four songs on the EP were also included on Pancy's third album, "劉鳳屏之歌" (Pancy Lau's Songs), released by New Wave Record Co. (新風) in 1970...

The text above is mostly based on this original feature that our friend Brian was kind enough to translate for us, THANK YOU! For a more detailed biography of Pancy Lau, please have a look at this other post of mine: "The Very Best of Pancy Lau Volume 1 [1968-70]".

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

01. 你幾時回家 (1:42)
02. 天上人間 (2:48)
03. 磁性的迷惑 (2:27)
04. 一吻定情 (2:29)

All tracks were remastered from vinyl in July 2015 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files; both formats include scans of the complete original artwork.

Please have a look at the comments for the download links.



Here's what I discovered searching information about the songs included on this EP:

Side A begins with the happy vibes of "你幾時回家" (When Will You Come Home?). Since I wasn't able to find much about this song, I speculate that it is an original composition; I patiently wait for someone who can shed light about this... The song was covered by 周玲寶 (Chow Ling Po) and 太陽神樂隊 (The Apollo), which is also supposed to be the backing band on all the track featured on this release.

Compared to the previous number, "天上人間" (Heaven on Earth) seems to be more linked to a traditional form, but once again I couldn't find any relevant information about it... This post is getting annoying, isn't it...?

...uhm, the first track on offer on Side B is entitled "磁性的迷惑" (Magnetic Seduction) and was previously performed by 姚蘇蓉 (Yao Su Rong) in a 1969 movie whose title eludes me... Once there used to be a clip on YouTube to testify it, but now it's gone so you must take my word for it.

As I already wrote in this other post, "一吻定情" (One Kiss To Mark Our Love) is my favourite Pancy Lau song for sure: the arrangement is simply marvellous, probably the grooviest Far-East track I happened to listen ever! The original version was a Japanese song recorded by singer / actor 橋 幸夫 (Yukio Hashi) in 1964. 黃菱 (Wong Ling) performed the original Mandarin version in 1967.

The following clips offer a preview of the remastered single, enjoy the title track "一吻定情" (One Kiss To Mark Our Love) and "你幾時回家" (When Will You Come Home?)!

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

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

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 authors.

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.