Local music royalty from our Bedok kampong

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Our grandmother really enjoyed eating the wantan mee from the coffee shop at the corner of the row of shops facing Bedok Corner along Bedok Road at the turn. Almost every day, our cousin - whom Grandma had raised from infancy and who lived with us in our Bedok kampong house - would head out to buy this meal for her. She was in her early teens then, around 1964.

On the way to the stall, she would pass the sundry shop and the Ho family’s house at 6C Bedok Road. She remembers clearly how, time and again, music spilled out from that home - guitars strumming, a band rehearsing, and a young female voice rising above it all.

It was only a year later, when Silver Threads and Golden Needles became a hit in 1965 (her favourite song), that she realised she had been walking past the home of one of the members of  Singapore’s 1960s music royalty: The Crescendos. All she knew back then was that she had a teenage crush on one of the boys, Raymond Ho “he is so handsome!”

Many thanks to Raymond and Ron Ho for these precious memories that still mean so much to us Bedok kampong folk. 






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