Hannah Ha knew her mother could sing. When she took the stage at karaoke, she always stole the show. But when a chance email revealed she had once been a recording artist called Phuong Tam in 1960s Saigon, Hannah was stunned.
“I couldn’t believe it. I had a million questions going through my brain…like how is this happening? Why didn’t she tell us?”
When her mother refused to say more, Hannah took matters into her own hands, spending hours on the internet before eventually stumbling across an old album on Ebay, with four of her Phuong Tam’s original tracks on it.
“When I got it, it was incredible. It was so fragile. I had to pick it up with my fingers because it was so crumbly. And the album cover is a picture of her. And when I put it on…it was yelling, and raspy, and just so groovy. I said mom, is this really you singing? And my mom heard it and said yes, that’s me singing.”
Those four songs were just the tip of the iceberg, a window onto a life Hannah never even knew existed...
Phuong Tam was born in 1945, and grew up in a Saigon suburb. And from an early age, she had one passion above all else. “I just loved to sing. When I was 12 years old, I would go outside in the courtyard and listen to the neighbour playing American music on the radio. I didn't understand English, but the melody I loved"
In the early 1960s, as the Vietnamese conflict intensified, the teenage Phuong Tam dropped out of school and started singing full time in bars and clubs catering to the American military personnel who were filling up the city.
Her distinctive raspy voice and gift for the rock and roll styles of the era made her an instant hit, and she recorded tens of songs with some of the most exciting musicians of the era. Articles were written about the young star, and her face graced billboards around Saigon.
But when she got married and started a family, she put her singing career on hold. And when the family were forced to flee to the US at the end of the Vietnam War, she shut the door on that chapter of her life entirely, starting again as an immigrant in a new country.
More than half a century later, when Hannah discovered this extraordinary story, she embarked on a two-year hunt to track down her mother's long-lost recordings - and her rock 'n' roll legacy.
Listen to Hannah Ha and Phuong Tam's story on Lives Less Ordinary
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