Blind Singer Heads For The Bright Lights

BLIND SINGER HEADS FOR THE BRIGHT LIGHTS
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by Errol De Cruz

After more than 10 years on the pub circuit in Penang, blind singer Alfred Ho has decided to make tracks for the bright lights of the big city.

"This is where the action is and if I'm ever going to make it to the big time, I'll have to be a success here first," Alfred said.

His first shot at fame had been in 1971when he strapped his box guitar across his shoulder and came here to compete against such talents as yodeller Brian Jeremiah and family group The Nettos on Bakat TV.

"My friend Matthew Josef, sent me to RTM with a reference letter and I thought that it was for a regular job", he recollected. "I never even dreamed that he wanted me to take part in the contest."

Unintended or not, Alfred, born in Klian Intan, Perak, reached the semi-finals and RTM subsequently featured him on several of its variety shows over the next three years. The blind singer however, soon had to head for Penang to work as a telephone operator with the municipal council there, while moonlighting at The Barrel, an island pub and other nightspots until 1984. During this time, he found that he had to go on leave frequently to handle some of the short stints which kept cropping up in towns on the mainland.

"So I decided that my singing career deserved my wholehearted attention. Moreover, keeping two jobs was very taxing and left me with almost no time for myself," he said.

Now, although there have been short periods when he has found himself jobless, Alfred has no regrets about his choice of career. Hoping to record his own album one day, he keeps his recording desires fullfilled, albeit temporarily, by recording his favourites, using a karaoke machine and minus one cassettes in the privacy of his room in brickfields. While here - and if he has the chance to - Alfred would like to team up with a female singer "perhaps one who could play the guitar or organ" to work the nightspot circuit with.

Besides his old favourites, especially Cliff Richard, who has greatly influenced his style, elvis presley, beatles, elton john, merle haggard, Alfred also does chinese, malay and spanish numbers.

Then again, there are his own compositions "from the early days" and the constant requests for them would see Alfred doing such songs as Train To Tennessee, Lilian and Wendy's song.

But the need to learn more new commercial songs to keep up with the other requests has been taking up a lot of my time," he said