Luckily it did not rain.
In the beginning, there was a bit of chaos when people tried to surge towards the Istana gates to get a vantage point. The police had to step in to organise the crowd. We waited patiently until the gun carriage emerged from the Istana, the president’s official residence. President Ishak’s casket was draped with the national flag. People wept openly. In a TV newscast later, we saw that Puan Noor was in a black baju kurong and lacy black selendang. Unlike the usual Muslim practice of not permitting women to go to a burial, there were other Malay female relatives, friends and officials who were also present. Dignitaries also attended the burial ceremony at Kranji State Cemetery. For the final rites, men in Malay garb and songkoks took over from the military pall bearers. They lifted the president’s body, wrapped in its burial shroud, out of the casket for it to be interred in the tomb in keeping with Muslim tradition. The newsreel ended with the 21-gun salute in his honour.
Don’t Play That Song
(1971)
AT the end of the previous year, Singapore’s most successful band among local singers and musicians, The Quests, announced that they were disbanding. Since its formation, there had been a reshuffling and changing of members in the group, as some dropped out and others went overseas for study. Their songs had been playing in dance halls like Badminton Hall, nightclubs, and on TV and radio regularly. In 1964, their song, ‘Shanty’, was the first by a local band to rise to the top of the Singapore Hit Parade. It was a guitar instrumental in the style of the famous British group, The Shadows, with the distinct twang of the electric guitar. The tune was composed by one of the four band members, Henry Chua, who was their bass player. He modestly said that he had no professional musical training. We were astounded when it displaced the Beatles’ song ‘I Should Have Known Better’ from the top spot. Imagine that! How many musical groups could claim to have displaced the Beatles? Especially one which was a local band? ‘Shanty’ stayed on the charts for almost 12 weeks, a phenomenal achievement for a local group. It became as well known as ‘Apache’, the world-famous tune strummed by The Shadows.
All the boys in our village made Karim, our resident musician, laugh when they picked up make-believe guitars and pretended to twang them with gusto. The vibrant local pop scene had inspired and nurtured homegrown singers and musicians. But the disbanding of The Quests told us that this magical era was ending.
Tiong Bahru neighbours Chong Chow Pin (better known as Jap), Raymond Leong, Henry Chua and Lim Wee Guan had formed The Quests in 1961. They were all teenage schoolboys then. Chong and Leong were from Queenstown Technical Secondary School, and they picked their group’s name from the school magazine. My elder brothers were great fans because the group’s first paid performance was at St Andrew’s School, where they had played on borrowed instruments. They were paid a princely sum of $20! St Andrew’s School was on Meyappa Chettiar Road, just next to Kampong Potong Pasir, where my brothers were schooling, and it was where Eldest Brother eventually became a teacher. Though we were Catholics, my brothers went to that school because of the generous bursaries for kampong kids.
“Wah! That Leong played the lead guitar like Hank Marvin,” Second Elder Brother enthused, citing the famed guitarist of The Shadows, who eventually backed Cliff Richard.
The Quests also backed local singers like Sakura Teng and Rita Chao, and also a young man called Wilson David, the Elvis Presley of Singapore, a dark handsome young man whose hair was styled like Elvis and with a voice just as velvety, making girls swoon. It was Wilson David who introduced The Quests to EMI Records, and thus helped them on the road to fame.
British-Jamaican Keith Locke joined the band as lead vocalist in 1965, but returned to England in 1967. Though his stint with The Quests was brief, with his soulful singing, The Quests produced 10 songs; their cover versions of 2 songs became instant hits. The first was ‘Be My Girl’ and the second, ‘Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)’, made the group a household name. Keith’s presence on stage and the way he moved earned him the moniker, Mr Dynamite. ‘Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)’ was written by a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter and philanthropist Ahmet Ertegün and Betty Nelson, wife of soul singer, Ben E. King, who first recorded it in 1962 in the US. Later, the song was performed by other artistes, like Aretha Franklin. But Keith Locke gave the song a distinctive Jamaican beat and lilt, which transformed it entirely. His rendition was deliciously melodious and it captured the hearts of many. Everywhere in Singapore, at tea dances and nightclubs, and on every radio programme, you could hear the song being sung.
Karim, who was himself a professional guitarist, admired The Quests, and he loved playing the song. These days, when he went out, Karim had to tie his hair back in a pony-tail that curled back so he could pin it short, making it appear as if he had short hair. Otherwise, he would be served last at all government offices, and also would not be allowed to perform at the nightclub. The campaign against men with long hair was still prevalent.
“Ah Phine,” Karim said. “You know the song? Want to help me teach the kids?”
I was so honoured he asked. My mother used to sing for him when he played dondang sayang type of songs. But Mak did not sing any English songs as she did not speak English, though she liked listening to Jim Reeves, Pat Boone, Cliff Richard and Andy Williams, who, she said, sang word-by-word, by which
