A Story of Second-Hand Blues
Oral histories of 5 Blues musicians and critics as a journey through the introduction of Blues in Hong Kong
( Article originally published in Chinese on Glass Onion in October, 2018. Translated by Kwong Chung Ting, and edited by Jabin Law.)
In 1903, a black man was curling up at a train station and plucking his guitar with a knife. The sound he made was eerie but it struck W.C. Handy, who was waiting beside the guitarist for a delayed train.12 years later, Handy released Memphis Blues, a song based on that weird sound he came across and made a name for himself as the Father of the Blues.
Drifting and drifting, the Blues had arrived at the Mississippi Delta with African slaves, meandered across the United States, and eventually changed music all over the world. Once it has strayed to the other side of the world, would the blues be depreciated solely as a stale and second-hand culture?
In Hong Kong, a city far away from the origin of Blues, a story of second-hand Blues continued to circulate. The story, without slavery and cotton fields, consists of 5 people across 4 generations- Peter Ng, Sam Jor, Tommy Chung, William Tang and SzeChai Chan.
Blues in the 60s, the secret immigrant
The introduction of blues in Hong Kong in the 60s was second-hand and hidden in boxes of rock and roll records with which overseas students brought home. “I was 14 and had just started learning to play the guitar. I played mostly the songs of Shadows and Ventures. But some of my friends studying in the UK told me that people there don’t listen to this kind of music,” Peter Ng recalled the records he received from his friends, including The Yardbirds, Cream and Jimi Hendrix, took at least a month to arrive in Hong Kong. “I became addicted to them immediately.”
Ng had then identified himself as a fan of rock and roll. Mimicking the guitar playing of his idol, Jeff Beck from The Yardbirds, had become his favourite thing to do. He did not know what Blues was until he read an interview of Eric Clapton from Cream in a magazine. “He said he stole from Freddie King and B.B. King. That was the moment I realised that I had skipped an important era of music which I should have comprehended and uncovered.”
Tracing rock and roll back to the blues, Ng not only learnt how blues had nurtured rock music, he also discovered how rock has inherited the spirit of blues, “Music comes from the bottom of your heart.” He sees the guitar in both genres as an exquisite reflection of players’ mind. “Two players playing the same licks with the same guitar can sound nothing in common. That’s something sentimental. No matter if it’s played by a white or black person, what you hear is emotion. Robert Johnson only played with a broken guitar but imitating him is still extremely difficult. The music came from his heart and you can never know how it happened.’
When it comes to capturing emotions, improvising is the key. Whether if Ng was writing his own songs or being invited to play for popular artists, there were always a few bars on the music sheets left for him to improvise. ‘We called the section “let it fly”, which was in fact just blues improvisation. I was the only one at that time playing stuff like that. Some famous senior musicians would ask what the heck I was playing afterward.’
He had also made a name for his obsession with improvised performance. His band, Ramband, was one of the earliest progressive rock bands in town. Not only seats were often destroyed by the over-excited audience, their stage was always packed with fans who could not help but rushed over. Their shows often ended with paying venues thousands of dollars for the damage caused. “We were once invited to play at an outdoor music show. And George Lam, a well-known pop singer, even asked Winnie Yu (the general manager of Hong Kong Commercial Radio) who was hosting the show, not to arrange his set after ours.”
“Western police officers would call for pre-show meetings. They would warn us not to do this and that. But I was disobedient at that time. I once threw my guitar off the stage after my set and the audience would fight for it.” Ng smirked and continued, “We were charged with disrupting public order. Although the charge was eventually acquitted, we were blacklisted by most venues in Hong Kong. So we never performed again.” Ramband was known as the Velvet Underground of Hong Kong since their music had inspired teenagers to form their own bands later on.
Sam Jor organised most of Ramband’s performances and compensated the venues for destroying facilities. He recognised that ‘rock’ was a foreign and radical idea to Hong Kong at that time. The liberation of body and emotions, together with the juvenile delinquents, terrorised parents and the government. Jor was also the founder of an influential music magazine Music Week, which introduced latest rock music in the ’70s. He observed that, although rock and roll struck Hong Kong teenagers deeply, ‘Blues, being rock biggest influence, was seldom recognised or performed in Hong Kong.”
Blues first reached Hong Kong as a recessive trait of rock music. However, by 1970, rock and roll has fallen on hard times. Cantopop was in vogue since Sam Hui’s 1974 single Games Gamblers Play became a hit. Musicians have to make a detour to the United Kingdom in order to continue the story of Hong Kong blues.
From Northampton to Hokkaido
In 1976, Tommy Chung was walking out from the North Point Town Hall. He watched a Ramband’s show but the tunes that hit so hard were from the guest performer Daniel Shek. He was 16-year-old without knowing that was called blues. He would be flying to the United Kingdom and beginning his high school study in Northampton later in the same year. After reading the Melody Maker, he bought the album Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton in a local record store. “That’s my first blues record. The first thing in my mind after listening to it was, this is the music I have always been searching for. It filled a void in my life.”
Chung spent his childhood in Kowloon Tong, where most Hong Kong children studied in English school and listened to western popular music. Since the first conscious encounter with blues music in the UK, he has never stopped listening. Even though he had become a registered barrister and had been working seven days a week, he continued collecting blues records and playing guitar.
“A lonely hobby” was how Chung described his love for blues. Sipping his beer, Chung’s face under the Panama hat is casual. “Local audience prefers Cantopop and karaoke. There have always been listeners of blues and jazz but it is still not enough to support any full-time musicians. After the rise of the internet, music is no longer the main source of entertainment. Records don’t sell and the number of venues is shrinking.”
Hong Kong’s music industry was monopolised by Cantopop in the 80s and 90s. Hong Kong Commercial Radio, which targeted at a young audience, only played songs in Cantonese in 1988 and initiated the Original Songs Campaign in 1995. Cantopop edged out non-Cantonese music for airtime and thus the opportunities to reach the audience. The total revenue of the music industry had been declining ever since.
Chung described blues as something simple but strong, “Either you love it or you hate it. Blues do not make up the majority of market share over the world. But there are always substantial audiences which have never appeared in Hong Kong.” He met his crowd in Japan when he was invited to perform in the 90s. “Blues was flourishing there. New records kept coming out all the time. Since there was a group of audience who understands blues, there was a lot of performing opportunities.”
Exchange Student in Blues
In 1994, Chung flew to Japan and recorded his debut blues album Play My Blues. Produced by the renowned Kazuo Takeda, it is the first Hong Kong blues album. In the same year, the British blues harmonica player William Tang recorded a session for the pop group Purple Heart in Hong Kong. ‘Despite my first harmonica recording, it had caught the attention of many producers, who then started inviting me to record. ’
Artists Tang collaborated with a range from pop stars such as Sandy Lam, Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Andy Hui, Aaron Kwok, and Eason Chan, to indie bands like Anodize and …HUH!?. “I believed that I am the one who introduced blues harmonica to Cantopop,” Tang replied in an interview through Facebook messages.
In 1996, he signed a record deal with Capital Artists. Albeit the focus on Cantopop artists, the label arranged guitar virtuosos Tommy Emmanuel and Eugene Pao to play on Tang’s debut blues album Movin’ On. Such investment was unprecedented for a blues musician in Hong Kong.
As an English-Chinese biracial musician, Tang decided to visit his father’s hometown, Hong Kong, as a graduation trip. It was 1990 when he had picked up harmonica just a year before. “I later formed a band and performed in HK Jazz Club and 12 Bar in Lan Kwai Fong. I also jammed with Eugene Pao, Johnny Abrahams, and Paul Candeleria.” He remembered the blues scene was still part of the underground culture, “But I have hosted numerous packed blues gigs in Art Centre. I guess there were actually people interested in the music?”
In 2003, Tang ended his 13-year trip in Hong Kong and continued his music career in England. On the other hand, SARS plagued Hong Kong and cast a shadow over the business of Chung’s blues bar 48th Street Chicago Blues, which drastically decreased the revenue of the bar to merely a few hundred Hong Kong dollars a day.
He quitted his job as a barrister more than a year by then and had been playing blues full-time. “Many said I am silly, which I’m sure they are right. But no matter if it is a court case or a gig, I always try my best.” Apart from practising guitar night and day, he performed in his bar every Saturday.
48th Street Chicago Blues, usually called the 48th Street, is the first and the only blues bar in Hong Kong where the music was played every night. “I was not ambitious. I was only doing it out of interest. I don’t want to die with regrets.”
The bar relied much on tourists which were threatened by SARS that it had to be shut down in 2004. Lasted only for 4 years, 48th Street was the first proper introduction of blues music to Hong Kong. However, its influence lingers on.
Looking Back from the 00s
SzeChai Chan was a frequent visitor of the 48th Street. “Blues did not appear a lot in Hong Kong popular culture, not on TV, the radio or in magazines. 48th Street is the only bar in the name of blues.” Using Bluesman as his moniker online, SzeChai knew nobody who is that interested in blues like him, “I was the only one who talked about blues on online forums so I called myself Bluesman. People usually listen to music from their generation. Tracing back is rare.”
He founded a blues band Dumb Melon Quartet in 2003, but the drummer and bassist were not blues players. It was to Chan’s surprise that they defeated Qiu Hong, one of the most important local metal bands, and became the champion of a music contest. But the future of a blues band is never guaranteed. Having difficulty to find substitutes for whom have left, Dumb Melon Quartet halted at last, “We have auditioned at least 10 bassists. They were either ignorant of blues or rock-oriented. We just couldn’t find a good fit.”
His first encounter with the blues was the TV programme Eric Clapton’s MTV Unplugged. “Later when I was taking folk guitar classes in YMCA, the tutor taught us some blues licks. I recognised the sound right away from what I had heard from Clapton. I thought, ‘Wow! This is my thing. This is what I’m gonna play.’ I began digging blues records from HMV and other record stores since then.”
During his search for the blues, Chan realised the sound of the blues has always been there, even in Cantopop. In 2002, he attended Danny Summer’s Om concert, which featured William Tang on harmonica and Eugene Pao on guitar. His song Today, Yesterday turned out to be a blues composition in Cantonese. “Watching their jam was exciting. I had tried to write a Cantonese blues song but I couldn’t.” He laughed and explained that the 12-bar structure is a huge limitation to melodies as Cantonese relies heavily on tones. Cantonese words are distinguished by its tones which are usually fixed for each word.
With that said, Chan insisted that Cantonese blues is possible. In fact, during the ’70s and ’80s, a number of songs have adopted various blues elements. “Adapted from Robert Cray’s Smoking Gun, 70 Flower Street by George Lam sounds bluesy without incorporating a full 12-bar structure.” He said, however, after the championing of Cantonese original songs during the 90s, Cantopop gradually adopted less element of the music genre.
Constantly looking for classic blues records, Chan once visited an experienced collector. “Most of his collections come from families of deceased men, and thus he has seen a lot of record collections from earlier generations. He told me that blues (records) in Hong Kong is a ‘vacuum’. Nobody listens to blues. “
Today, Yesterday
All of them claimed that blues was a niche in their generations.
In 1975, an article called Blues was published in a literary magazine. The author introduced its history and musical characteristics, “blues is more like a sharp-edged knife that cut through our pain, void, and sense of loss. It reveals wounds behind the hypocrisy of civilization.”
The passage is followed by making sense of the indifference to blues in Hong Kong. “Blues is unpopular and has very few listeners. What people need is realistic music that talks about daily lives. What we need is rustic and vulgar music that can pass down in the alley.”
Blues in Hong Kong may not echo the story that upended the world of popular music. As oblivious to the mainstream as it may seem, the spark of the Blues scatters across every generation, just like how it called for W.C. Handy in 1903.
