Cinderella from Saigon

To complete Bach-Yen’s Sonobeat release, producer Bill Josey Sr. called in orchestral arranger Richard Green (who also provided the string arrangement on Sonobeat’s first single by Lavender Hill Express). Richard layered strings and horns, performed by members of the Austin Symphony Orchestra, over the original tracks, which already included Bach-Yen’s vocals, so he had to embellish and punctuate the tracks while minding the wide dynamic range of Bach’s vocals, which varied from sotto voce to fortissimo. There was no calling Bach-Yen back for a vocal overdub re-do, as she was already booked solid into nightclubs across the U.S. but had no return engagements booked in Austin. Bach’s Sonobeat single was completed on August 29, 1968, and released a little over two months later.

Bach-Yen’s backing track and vocal overdub master tape

Bach-Yen’s completed master, with a string and horn arrangement overdub

Bach-Yen’s Sonobeat stereo single (1968)

Bach-Yen, whose full name is Quách ThỊ Bạch Yển, was born and reared in Sóc Trǎng in the former French colony of Vietnam, thus influencing her choice of Magali, by noted French artiste Robert Nyel, for the “B’ side of her Sonobeat single. As a teen Bach-Yen performed in SaigonSaigon (Sài Gòn in Vietnamese) has been known since 1976 as Ho Chi Minh City and is the largest metropolitan area by population in Vietnam. nightclubs and recorded several singles for local labels. Naturally fluent in French as well as Vietnamese, in 1961 she moved to Paris to study the “continental touch” singing style (exemplified by acclaimed French chanteuse Edith Piaf) at Jacob’s Ladder Music School and in 1963 landed a recording contract with powerhouse European label Polydor, recording three albums and building a large fan base throughout central Europe. She returned to Saigon in 1964.

In 1965, Bach-Yen trekked to the United States specifically for a single performance on America’s favorite Sunday night TV variety program, The Ed Sullivan Show. Bach’s trip to America was the brainchild of two Navy lieutenants stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam conflict. A months-long search led the officers to Bach-Yen, but it took a lot of convincing to get her to agree to make the trip to the U.S. and still more convincing to get backers to finance the trip. Finally, Bob Precht, a producer of The Ed Sullivan Show, agreed to pay to bring Bach-Yen to New York to appear on the program. Bach’s performance on Sullivan’s show, then the top-rated TV variety program in America, was sensational, and she was immediately booked into guest slots on other TV variety shows, including The Bob Hope Show, The Joey Bishop Show, and Shindig. Before you knew it, Bach’s two-week U.S. visit turned into a non-stop 12-year tour of 46 states, Canada, Mexico, and South America. When Bach was cast in The Green Berets, she got a welcome break from an intense year-long tour with Liberace, shooting her “Vietnam” scenes in Georgia and recording her spotlight solo, Le Seine (The River Seine), for the film’s soundtrack in Burbank, California. Featured in the film alongside Austin radio and television personality Cactus Pryor, one of John Wayne’s close friends, ironically Bach’s character was a nightclub singer in a Saigon bar, unintentionally mirroring her real-life background. Impressed with Bach during production of the film, Cactus suggested she should extend her tour to Austin, then enlisted his friend Don Dean, manager of The Club Seville, to provide the venue and backing band. In turn, Don, who recorded Sonobeat”s third 45 RPM single release in 1967, introduced Bach to Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr., leading to Bach’s recording session at The Club Seville.

Newspaper ad for Bach-Yen’s final Club Seville engagement

Newspaper ad for a Bach-Yen appearance in Phoenix, Arizona

Sonobeat’s only international star

Bach-Yen’s Sonobeat single added a bit of international intrigue to the label’s rapidly diversifying catalog. Don arranged to sell copies of the single at The Club Seville”s coat check stand, helping boost sales considerably. However, Sonobeat was discouraged when neither Billboard nor Cash Box reviewed the single, given Bach&squo;s popularity with American audiences.

Bach-Yen returned to Paris in 1977 and then, influenced by her future husband Târn Quang Hai,  returned to her Vietnamese musical roots. Today, in her 80s, Bach-Yen continues to perform traditional Vietnamese songs in concerts throughout the world.

Sonobeat recorded Bach-Yen in the swanky Embassy Room at The Club Seville, a popular private dinner and dance club. The room’s thick carpeting and draperies and acoustic tile ceiling intentionally absorbed sound so diners could hear each other over clanking glasses and dishes and the evening show that was performed on a low stage in the center of the room. Sonobeat’s master recordings of Bach-Yen have a distinctively “dry” sound because the sound damping in the Embassy Room eliminated natural reverberation. At the time Sonobeat recorded Bach-Yen, Sonobeat had no artificial reverb system, so reverb was added by Sidney J. Wakefield & Company during its mastering of the lacquers used to manufacture the phonograph record pressing plates. Therefore, there are no tape recordings of the reverb-enhanced version of Bach-Yen”s single in the Sonobeat archives. Our sound bites below feature the original “dry” versions and our 2015 reverb-enhanced versions that come close to the sound of the original vinyl release. In 2020, we began experimenting with AI-enhanced audio processing techniques as we worked to restore and remaster material in the Sonobeat archives. We present a short excerpt below of the instrumental backing track for Magali, which, as we explained above, was actually not a backing track but rather an orchestral overdub on top of a vocal overdub on top of The Michael Stevens IV’s original instrumental backing track. AI post-processing made it possible to separate vocal and instrumental for purposes of rebalancing tracks that were otherwise “set in stone”.

Bach-Yen publicity photo