Album Notes

1960s Taiwanese phenomenon, the guitar- playing, yodeling and whistling songstress Ho Lan makes her CDBaby debut in this compilation of previously unreleased tracks. The album opens with four Mexican standards Maria Elena, Cucurrucucu Paloma, La Malagueña Salerorsa, Granada, followed by Mike Velarde Jr.'s poignant love song Ikaw sung in Tagalog. Also included on this multi-lingual, cross-cultural album are three songs sung in Mandarin Chinese: Echo from Deep Valley and Heart's Wish by Ho Lan, and her own arrangement of the Chinese folk song Jasmine Blossom, familiar to Western ears thanks to Puccini's Tourandot. Ho Lan sings a yodeling rendition of the American campfire favorite Home on the Range, the Polynesian/English version of the Hawaiian Wedding Song, and a dynamic big band arrangement of Rudolf Friml's 1920s hit Indian Love Call.
A self-taught musician, Ho Lan was discovered after appearing on a televised talent contest. She soon became a regular on the weekly-televised Taiwanese variety show "Chun Xing Hui" (Gathering of Stars.) She was also the featured singer at the Ambassador Hotel of Taipei with the Kupa Orchestra, an eighteen-piece big band. Ho Lan is best known for her incredibly wide vocal range and charming yet earnest singing style which captivated her audiences both in the East and in the West. All tracks on this album were recorded in the 1960s and 1970s,now digitally remastered in stereo by Ho Lan's daughter, Grammy-nominated recording engineer Hsi-Ling Chang.
See title song Echo from Deep Valley slideshow by visiting http://www.mandalastudio.com/media-files/echodeephi.swf