For a couple of years in the mid-'60s a young woman named
Phương Tâm was the toast of Saigon's pop music scene. Almost a decade into the Vietnam War, the country was receiving a massive influx of American soldiers, bringing with them popular western trends, dance crazes, and musical styles. With her innate charisma and highly adaptable voice, the teenaged
Tâm was able to fuse myriad western influences, from rock & roll and surf music to jazz ballads, pop, and soul. After rising to the top of the night club circuit as one of the country's first rock singers and recording a prolific spate of hit singles,
Tâm left the entertainment world in 1966 and her music fell into obscurity. In 2021, with the help of London-based producer Mark Gergis,
Tâm's daughter helped track down nearly all of her recorded output, resulting in the career retrospective
Magical Nights: Saigon Surf, Twist & Soul (1964-1966).
As a teenager in the early-'60s,
Nguyễn Thi Tâm, known by her stage name
Phương Tâm, rose through Saigon's tea rooms and nightclubs singing about trends from the other side of the world. Possessed of a marvelously expressive voice, she purred, growled, and crooned her way through songs about hot rods, surfing, and dances like the mashed potato and the hully gully. She stood out not only for her voice and command of the stage, but for the fact that she was one of the only Vietnamese singers tackling American rock music. Among the city's quickly growing music industry, she was soon being courted by a number of leading labels and studios. In 1964
Tâm proved that she could translate that same energy in the studio and began releasing a prolific battery of singles that turned her into Vietnam's first rock & roll star. Over twanging electric guitars, blaring saxophones, and roaring drums, she delivered spirited songs like "Có Nhớ Đêm Nào (Remember the Night)" and "Nếu Có Xa Nhau (If We’re Far Apart)" to a young audience crazy for western trends. In 1966, while still on top, she chose to walk away from music, having recorded roughly 30 songs over a two-year period. In the decades that followed, her records languished in obscurity, occasionally popping up as collector's items or appearing on the rare Asian pop compilation.
A half-century later,
Tâm's family knew little of her musical past and her story was in danger of being lost to history. When her daughter Hannah Hà learned the extent of her mother's popularity, she took it upon herself to bring
Tâm's music into the 21st century. Working with producer and archivist Mark Gergis and a host of international record collectors, Hà was able to acquire clean copies of nearly all of her mother's songs. Remastered and released by the Sublime Frequencies label,
Magical Nights: Saigon Surf, Twist & Soul (1964-1966) marked the first-ever anthology of
Phương Tâm's music. ~ Timothy Monger