Ngoc Lan on PBN

When we think of Ngoc Lan in music videos, naturally May Productions would most likely be the first production company that would come to mind due to her lengthy association with the label and the two very memorable solo videotapes of Ngoc Lan that had been released in the early 1990s.  Asia Productions would probably come second in terms of a production company associated with Ngoc Lan's appearances in music videos.  It is only fair to say that Ngoc Lan's work on her first two solo music videotapes produced by May Productions truly revolutionized the Vietnamese music video production industry setting higher standards in quality.  The enormous success from both of Ngoc Lan's solo music videotapes produced by May Productions undoubtedly enabled the label to launch the Hollywood Night series in the early 1990s, in which its popularity for a number of years really had given the Paris by Night series produced by Thuy Nga Paris a serious run for its money.  With each volume of Paris by Night that Thuy Nga Paris was dishing out during those years in the early 1990s, May Productions would immediately right behind them coming out with a new volume of the Hollywood Night series with just as wide of viewer audience reception.  The competition between the two labels was quite stiff as the performances of each of their products out in the market were really neck and neck.  But then right around the mid 1990s, another competitor joined in on the race, Asia Productions.  Like the saying goes, only the strong survive.  That was the case with this war between Thuy Nga Paris, Asia Productions and May Productions.   Despite having Ngoc Lan on their lineup of regular performers along with the recruitment of several top players from the Paris by Night stage such as Lynda Trang Dai, Huong Lan, Y Lan, Tuan Ngoc and Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, May Productions couldn't stand up to the fierce competition against Thuy Nga Paris and Asia Productions by the mid 1990s.  Following the downfall of May Productions, their biggest star, Ngoc Lan, would venture out and collaborate with Asia Productions as well as Thuy Nga Paris to make appearances on each of the production companies' live show music video series.  This move by Thuy Nga Paris of recruiting Ngoc Lan onto the lineup of Paris by Night performers came as of no

Ngoc Lan's Debut Appearance on Paris by Night
  Performing Duc Huy's Mua Xuan Trong Doi Mat Em 

surprise.  Afterall, Ngoc Lan was one of the most bankable recording artists among overseas Vietnamese singers.  Since Thuy Nga Paris has been the most prolific overseas Vietnamese music production label with its extremely successful Paris by Night series which has served as the primary stage for overseas Vietnamese entertainers featuring all the biggest names, why wouldn't Ngoc Lan be recruited?  Ngoc Lan certainly ranks as one of the biggest names ever among overseas Vietnamese singers.

Ngoc Lan on Paris by Night
 performing Con Mua Trong Doi

Ngoc Lan's tenure at Thuy Nga Paris, although brief lasting only from 1995-1996, would, however, entail performances on the Paris by Night stage that have been considered to be some of her most memorable.  Contrary to her performances on Hollywood Night, we see a more mature Ngoc Lan on the Paris by Night series.  The songs she had selected to appear on video for Thuy Nga Paris were more heartfelt and geared specifically toward a more mature adult viewer audience.  All five of her appearances on Paris by Night, Ngoc Lan was seen singing ballads.  Even her style of dress had changed.  Ngoc Lan would be seen wearing elegant evening gowns in all but one out of the five music videos for Thuy Nga which was a far cry from the days when she was either dressed in shorts singing and dancing to Joe le Taxi with a group of back-up dancers on the Hollywood Night stage or better yet, when she was dancing around in a lake dressed in a gothic all-black dress and wearing a hat in her music video of Johnny, Johnny.  It's not that she didn't look cute back in those earlier videos.  She certainly did.  But Ngoc Lan was an artist with enough wisdom to know how to dress and appear in a style that is age appropriate.  During the time of Ngoc Lan's collaboration with Thuy Nga Paris, although still quite beautiful, she was by then approaching 40.  She was fully aware that her days of being seen in skimpy shorts singing and dancing on stage to bubble gum music were well over and that a more sophisticated look and sound were evidently the appropriate image for her to now take on.  As it turned out, Ngoc Lan's calculations were dead on.  And because of that, she would only further gain the respect and adoration of her huge following of fans.

Ngoc Lan looking very sexy
while singing Duy Quang's Kiep Dam Me on Paris by Night  

All five of the songs that Ngoc Lan had performed on Paris by Night were nothing short of phenomenal beginning with her debut appearance on the series on Volume 33 with the song, Mua Xuan Trong Doi Mat Em.  Since this is a tune penned by Duc Huy, what other singer would be more well suited to record this song than our beloved Ngoc Lan, herself?  Ngoc Lan's performance of Kiep Dam Me was just flawless.  She looked incredibly sexy in that dress.  After hearing her rendition, I must say no other singer could even match Ngoc Lan's interpretation of this beautiful, heartbreaking ballad penned by her friend, the legendary singer/songwriter Duy Quang.  In Em Ve Nao Co Hay, written by composer Hoang Trong Thuy, Ngoc Lan really pours her heart and soul into the song.  Again, I can't think of another singer's version of that song I'd rather listen to.  Con Mua Trong Doi, a song that was originally written in Japanese and given Vietnamese lyrics written by Khuc Lan, was another flawless performance from Ngoc Lan on Paris by Night.  And finally, my favorite of them all, Ngoc Lan's performance of Trinh Nam Son's Ve Day Em clearly exemplified why I had become a devoted fan of hers.  Ngoc Lan's delivery of this song was gentle and sweet, yet passionate and full of emotion.  I still get chills everytime I watch this video on YouTube.

Ngoc Lan and Ve Day Em on Paris by Night

I wish Ngoc Lan's tenure on Thuy Nga Paris had been a longer one.  As a matter of fact, I wish Ngoc Lan's life and career had been longer.  It is rather difficult to accept how such a great artist who was so beautiful and talented like our beloved Ngoc Lan is no longer with us.  But at least we still have her music and videos to remember her by.  The legend of Ngoc Lan definitely still lives on. 

Ngoc Lan and the Men She Loved

During the time of my friendship with Ngoc Lan, she was still a very young woman.  Beautiful, young, successful, classy, educated, but she had yet to have a ring worn on her finger.
As a single woman, who was also young and beautiful, it was not surprising that Ngoc Lan would have her fair share of suitors pining away for her heart.  But this young, beautiful single woman also had a very successful career, another quality that made Ngoc Lan an even better catch to potential suitors.  But there was one other quality she had that would send her over the edge, and that was....besides being a young, beautiful and successful single woman, she was also Ngoc Lan.



Duc Huy and Ngoc Lan

Like she had explained to me, being who she was, and having such tremendous fame and success, many men found her to be intimidating.  Please keep in mind that I didn't write this post with any intention of dishing out any private details about her personal life.  But I did get to meet a nice man by the name of Thanh Lam, a famous saxophone player in the Vietnamese community, who was then her boyfriend.  He was very charming, as well as good looking.  Together, I thought they were an attractive and classy couple.  But Ngoc Lan was extremely busy with her career, as he equally was with his. However their relationship ended, that is between them.  Unlike many other females, Ngoc Lan never was the type to be talking endlessly on the telephone or writing notes to her boyfriend. I never once heard of any story from other singers of Ngoc Lan ever causing any public scene fighting with a boyfriend.  That was not Ngoc Lan's style.  She was much more mature and always carried herself like a lady.



Ngoc Lan and Duy Quang on their
last duet album together.

Ngoc Lan and Duy Quang
recorded some of the most
successful duet albums in the
overseas Vietnamese music industry
throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Ngoc Lan and Duy Quang paired up
for the second time on a duet
album that had been produced
and released in 1990 by Dream Musical
Productions.

When someone looks the way Ngoc Lan did, it is expected that members of the opposite sex will tend to take notice quite often.  I saw this happen quite a few times whenever I had gone places with her.  Now, as far as the places that we went to where we were surrounded by Vietnamese people everywhere, I really can't say that Ngoc Lan would have men cluster to her trying to ask her out on a date.  Afterall, she was Ngoc Lan.  I'm certain that many Vietnamese men wanted to, but this was Ngoc Lan we're talking about here.  Her fame in addition to her beauty, although were attractive qualities, simply intimidated a lot of Vietnamese men.



Ngoc Lan and Tuan Ngoc



Tuan Anh and Ngoc Lan -
What is there to say except that
the Vietnamese rumor mills
can be quite creative at times?

Trinh Nam Son and Ngoc Lan at a live performance.

I do remember one particular occasion when she and I had gone to Neiman Marcus so she could try on this dress she had recently purchased there and had sent back for alterations.  While she waited for the sales clerk to return from the stock room with the dress after the completed alterations, this handsome Caucasian man who was also a patron at the department store obviously was deeply enchanted by her beauty.  As he struck up a conversation by saying hello to her, followed by "You are very beautiful."  I was amazed at how she handled it.  Up until then, I had only seen how most other Vietnamese girls usually responded in similar situations.  It was either one of two ways, both of which I don't particularly care for.  The first way is really annoying.  For some reason, a lot of Vietnamese girls tend to think that it is cute if they should talk in the most meekest volume as if they were trying to impersonate the voice of  an infant.  They would usually respond with, "No, I'm not" in a whispering voice, followed by a shrug as if someone had just forced them to gulp down a glass of pure lime juice without any sugar.  The other way, I guess, would be how the more liberated Vietnamese female would respond.  And that is, upon receiving, they would give them a mean look immediately to make sure that the man realizes that what he just said was beyond deplorable.  And if he knew what was good for him, he should never even think of saying that to another Vietnamese girl, or he just might end with a few bullets through his window sometime soon.  I realize I might be in the minority, but I really don't care much for either of the two ways I've seen Vietnamese girls respond whenever they've been paid a compliment on their beauty.  I was really impressed with Ngoc Lan's response to that man.  She looked up at him with a friendly smile, and said, "Thank you.  I'm very flattered."  I could tell that she wasn't interested in him, yet she remained pleasant and kept her composure. Like any man who was already smitten, he proceeded anyway to ask if she would be busy this coming weekend.  Ngoc Lan smiled again at him, and answered, "I'll be out of town this weekend."  He asked again about the following weekend, and she responded with the same answer.  Before he was about to ask about the weekend after that, Ngoc Lan replied with, "I'm actually going to be out of town every weekend for the rest of this year and all the way until March of next year I'll then have a weekend off."  The man thought she was joking.  But she really wasn't since she did have a booking each week for the rest of the year to do one night shows all around the world.  As she said her goodbye to him, she briefly explained why her weekends were all booked by disclosing her profession.  Ngoc Lan's reason for the explanation was so that he would not think she was blowing him off in a rude manner.  She also told him that she was not interested because she already was in a relationship, and thanked him again as she said goodbye.  I thought that was really classy.  Now, why can't other Vietnamese girls carry themselves like Ngoc Lan?  Maybe, that's why she is Ngoc Lan. 

Ngoc Lan had managed to reach to the very top in her profession.  She was a celebrity.  Unlike most other professions, a singer that is successful in his or her career is synonymous with a singer that has become famous.  Ngoc Lan was well aware of that.  In her own words, she once taught me how "fame is like a double-edged sword and should always be something that a singer should always try to maintain with the most caution."  I must say, she definitely knew exactly what she was talking about. 

Ngoc Lan and the real man in her life, her husband, Kelvin Khoa, at their wedding.

Most people who knew Ngoc Lan personally will agree with me when I say that she was one very candid individual.  Rather than resort to similar habits and activities partaken by most other singers, Ngoc Lan was rather reserved and had better things to do.  Never would anyone find Ngoc Lan carousing around late at night at bars and parties.  In fact, the only times Ngoc Lan could ever be seen at any nightclub was when she was there to fulfill a singing engagement.  Now that I think about it, even if she had wanted to hang out at bars like how many of her colleagues frequently do, she wouldn't be able to even find the time to hang out because of her extremely busy non-stop work schedule.  Despite the precautions Ngoc Lan had taken in order to avoid becoming a target of gossip or scandal that the public seems highly capable to start as quickly as circulate, her celebrity status was also not immune to falling victim to the vicious rumor mills.  I guess the same applies with celebrities of all different cultures.  The public just loves to gossip about famous people, and rumors do spread around quickly.  Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but when it comes to comparing how fast rumors can spread around among different cultures, the Vietnamese mouth more than likely would take the cake in that marathon. 

Like most other singers who pair up with another singer of the opposite sex as a duet, rumors of Ngoc Lan having dating Duy Quang, as well as Duc Huy, Trung Hanh, Jo Marcel, Elvis Phuong, Tuan Ngoc, and Trinh Nam Son were in full circulation within the Vietnamese gossip mills.  There were even rumors of Tuan Anh and her.

I remember how she would just laugh at how ridiculous these rumors were.  As a matter of fact, besides Thanh Lam whom she had dated over ten years ago before she would meet one other fellow that she would become romantically involved with.  It was a fellow by the name of Kelvin Khoa, whom she ended up marrying.  Since I had become friends with Ngoc Lan and really had gotten to know her, I must say, that there are such singers out there who simply are nice and proper.  Not every singer lives his or her life filled with scandal after scandal.  From what I know, Ngoc Lan was a talented, beautiful singer with a lot of class and was always a lady.

As for the rumors about herself that had been well circulated among Vietnamese rumor mills in all four corners of the world , Ngoc Lan pretty much took them with a good attitude.  That was when she started borrowing a phrase I often said, "That's Vietnamese people for you.  You just gotta love them." 

Ngoc Lan Biography (Part 3 Out of 3)

Ngoc Lan started the 1990s with the release of her solo videotape for May Productions.  This would be considered her biggest triumph of her career.  With a pair of bestsellers of studio albums for Giang Ngoc behind her and now a solo music videotape with sales through the roof, Ngoc Lan was now able to command the highest salary among all other Vietnamese singers. 

During the height of her success with extensive travels all over the world performing for Vietnamese audiences, a couple of events would cause Ngoc Lan to cancel some of her performances.  For the first time ever in her career, this would be a let down to her many fans.  The first of these events was the unexpected death of Ngoc Lan's sister.  Her sister who had owned a liquor store had been shot to death during a robbery in 1992.  It was also during this time, Ngoc Lan would experience mysterious health problems.  Unable to find the accurate prognosis, Ngoc Lan would publicly announce that her sister's death was the main reason for the cancellation of her shows.

An absence from the spotlight would allow Ngoc Lan to concentrate on her personal life, as well as her health.  After a long and frustrating search to find out what was wrong with her, it would be discovered that what she had been suffering from was a condition known as Multiple Sclerosis.  As her disease went into remission, Ngoc Lan decided to get married.  In 1994, in a private small ceremony Ngoc Lan became wed to a fellow artist by the name of Kelvin Khoa.  The newlywed couple would purchase a house in the upper middle class suburb of Irvine, California where a recording studio was built inside for her recordings. 

As her Mulitple Sclerosis went into remission, Ngoc Lan felt it was time to make a comeback.  A much publicized sold out performance would follow at the Anaheim Marriott where it became apparent of her medical condition.  In front of a sold out audience, Ngoc Lan tried her hardest to put out a stellar performance.  But to everyone present that night, she appeared to be rather off during her live performance.  Other featured performers that night included Tuan Ngoc, Don Ho, Lynda Trang Dai and then newcomer, Thanh Ha.  Although the event was an enormous financial success for producer Quoc Thai of May Bon Phuong, for Ngoc Lan's fans her performance that night was a disappointment.    

In the years to come, Ngoc Lan insisted on keeping her health matters from the public.  She kept at a grueling pace for as long as she could recording, touring and making video appearances for Thuy Nga Paris and Asia Productions.  But during a performance when Ngoc Lan had to be walked onto the stage, it became apparent to the public that her sight had been affected by her ongoing battle with Multiple Sclerosis.  Ngoc Lan would make her last professional video appearance in 1998.  And on March 6, 2001, Ngoc Lan would lose her long battle with Multiple Sclerosis and took her last breath. 

Link(s):

Ngoc Lan Remembered on HubPages