Dr. Agnes Chan - Bopper With Beauty & Brains!

She would probably be an early Singapore 70s influence as her first hit was during that period but what intrigued me are the two new unscratched vinyls* I found in Sungei Road and the fact that she has a PhD. from Stanford University.

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Agnes Chan began singing and playing the guitar for fund raising events during her junior high years in Hong Kong. When she recorded a cover of Joni Mitchell's, "The Circle Game" with her elder sister, actress Irene Chan, it became the greatest hit on the island. She was only 14 and soon became a celebrity throughout South East Asia.

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Chan was taken to Japan by a Japanese singer/songwriter in 1972 and recorded her first Japanese pop hit, "Poppy Flower." She became an overnight sensation and a teenage idol. In 1973, Chan's third single, "Splendor in the Grass" earned her the Japan Record Grand Prix "Rookie of the Year" award. She is also known in Japan as, "the fairy who came from Hong Kong."
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There was a controversy about her motherhood and career so she wrote a thesis on the conflicts of working mothers and earned her Stanford PhD in 1994. She also added steadily to her public portfolio, writing newspaper and magazine columns, appearing on television news and game shows and raising money for charitable causes.

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*$2.00 for above vinyl (image) and EP 2124, which is Agnes Chan's Christmas classics, "All I Want For Xmas...", "Mr Mistletoe", "Rocking Around The Xmas Tree" and "The Little Drummer Boy". They are both on Life Records and the Xmas EP was arranged by a Wallace Chow.

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YouTube: agnes chan nobodys child (recorded at age 15, Hong Kong, 1971)

(Information from Agnes Chan websites, Wikipedia and Stanford University Alumni pages.)