An Evergreen Songstress

I'd probably been exposed to Zhou Xuan's works earlier than I realized. Zhou Xuan, a popular Chinese singer and film actress of the gramophone era who had recorded over 200 albums, was nicknamed Golden Voice after a singing competition in Shanghai. She achieved stardom in 1937 in Street Angel when director Yuan Muzhi cast her as a singing girl. Together with Bai Guang, Bai Hong, Gong Qiuxia, Li Xianglan, Wu Yingyin and Yao Lee, she formed the Seven great singing stars in the 1930s when Japanese occupied Shanghai. Zhou Xuan was probably the most well-known of the seven and even though she had passed away in 1957 at the age of 39 in a Shanghai mental asylum, her songs have remained as popular as ever. Many popular singers had rerecorded her songs including the late Teresa Teng who sang When will you return? . There were many versions of this song in YouTube and someone commented that that the later versions were all lame compared to Zhou Xuan's rendition which was described as awesome even though she had sang with the accompaniment of just an accordion!

When will you return by Teresa Teng



When will you return? by Zhou Xuan

Zhou Xuan in the 1937 Wandering Songstress or Street Angel which launched her career...



Zhou Xuan's Evergreen...

Comments

Liudmila said…
For me the different voices of that epoch were strainge. Maybe I'm not right but they seem to me all equal.
footiam said…
Someone I know thought so too and I think trends always change. The old do sounds strange!