Vietnamese singer Bach-Yen records at Sonobeat in Austin

This Week in Texas Music History, Vietnam comes to Sixties Austin through an unexpected ambassador.

***This Week In Texas Music History is supported by Brane Audio***

Episodes written by Jason Mellard, Alan Schaefer, and Avery Armstrong

On January 18, 1968, Vietnamese singer Bach Yen cut a 45 single for Sonobeat Records in Austin. Formed by father and son team Bill Josey, Sr. and Bill Josey, Jr., Sonobeat was one of Austin’s earliest successful indie labels, capturing such late Sixties local acts as the Sweetarts, Lavender Hill Express, and the Conqueroo. The Joseys struck it big with their only major LP, Beaumont-born Johnny Winter’s 1968 debut album Progressive Blues Experiment. Bill Josey, Jr., under the name Rim Kelley, recorded the album in the Austin venue the Vulcan Gas Company.  The Sonobeat team licensed the LP to Imperial Records, launching Winter’s storied career. 

The path that brought Bach Yen to Sonobeat was a bit more circuitous. 1968, of course, was the height of the Vietnam War, and Austin’s connections to LBJ meant that the conflict’s fault lines often ran through the heart of the city. Bach Yen was a popular singer who had gotten her start in Saigon for a cosmopolitan audience, learning nightclub standards in English, French, Spanish, and Italian in addition to Vietnamese. In 1961, she headed to Paris, inspired by her hero Edith Piaf. In 1965, just as the US phase of the Vietnam conflict intensified, Bach Yen appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York. Bookings on The Bob Hope Show, The Joey Bishop Show, and Shindig! soon followed, and Bach Yen stayed in the US for the next twelve years. In 1968, she appeared in the John Wayne film The Green Berets, and on set came to know co-star Cactus Pryor, an Austin comedian. Appreciating her music, Pryor convinced Bach Yen to take a break from touring with Liberace for an Austin gig at the swanky Club Seville along Town Lake. The Joseys came to the club to record her for Sonobeat.

Bach Yen’s Austin single included the standard “This Is My Song” backed with “Magali” and was an interesting international footnote to the Sonobeat label. After the close of the Vietnam War, Bach Yen returned to Paris in 1977. She resumed her European recording career while also completing a homecoming of sorts, incorporating more traditional Vietnamese songs and instruments into her international nightclub repertoire.

Sources:

Ricky Stein. Sonobeat Records: Pioneering the Austin Sound in the ‘60s. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014.

Media:

Bach Yen on the Bob Hope Show, 1966

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