Ladies of Calcutta

Photographs courtesy: Ray Flight

Did Kal Kahn come up with this phrase, asks Mathures Paul
English people sleeping in the sun to get a tan,
Pouring oil upon their faces like a frying pan,
Funny thing about it is they all go rosy red,
Next day when the peeling starts they're crying in their beds...

A person by the name Kal Kahn murdered the English language, thought the British, when he sang Oh to be in England and Ladies of Calcutta. That 45 rpm brings back loads of memories, especially of those unforgettable music sessions that preceded Sunday brunches, followed by Musical Bandbox on All India Radio. Every week there would be one request for either of these Kal Kahn numbers. Whether he gave birth to the phrase "ladies of Calcutta" remains a mystery but he surely made it famous.
Making the album an endearing one is its sleeve, completely white. Water logging over the years has robbed many vinyls of their sleeves. Thus it became somewhat of a quest to find out who this Kal Kahn was. Why did he write Kahn? Didn't his pronunciation make him appear to be a singer of the sub-continent? Is he alive? Answers remain elusive to many of these questions, except one ~ Who is Kal Kahn?
Meet Bill Forbes. An Englishman helped me to Kahn's whereabouts. Out of the blue he responded to an e-mail that I had sent out many months back. He said Kahn lives in Huddersfield and provided a telephone number. Sadly, the telephone call did not mature. Yet, he provided me enough information to satisfy a childhood curiosity.
Forbes was born in Sri Lanka in 1938 and left for Britain in 1955. He always wanted to be a singing sensation, a dream that matured in the form of appearances at Bread Basket coffee bar.
At this juncture, it's important to introduce another famous singer into the article ~ Cliff Richard. Some of you may be aware that Richard was once a part of Oh Boy! show, which provided competition to BBC's 6.5 Special Teen Show. On the show singers like Sir Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey, Marty Wilde and Billy Fury made appearances. On Oh Boy! Forbes was a regular.
He was to make his debut on 1 November 1958 after a string of rehearsals at Empire Theatre and Four Provinces of Ireland Club. But Tommy Steele's appearance postponed his entry to 13 December.
Between 1959 and 1962 he released tracks regularly on Columbia Records. His biggest hit was Too Young, a song that made him a hero in Sri Lanka.
Besides his 11 appearances on Oh Boy!, Forbes was seen in Cool For Cats (1959, BBC) and Thank Your Lucky Stars (1961, ABC). For a few years since 1963 he did the rounds of nightclubs and formed his band ~ The Contrasts. He settled for a life outside showbiz in1975.
Bill Forbes is an example of how a couple of songs can make a singer achieve immortality. And he wasn't incorrect when he called the "ladies of Calcutta" "bherry bherry pretty"!


Bill Forbes' Eight single releases in the United Kingdom
Columbia DB4232 1959 My Cherie/ God's Little Acre
Columbia DB4269 1959 Once More/ Believe In Me
Columbia DB4386 1959 Too Young/ It's Not The End Of The World
Columbia DB4566 1961 You're Sixteen/ Backward Child
Columbia DB4619 1961 That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On/ Big City Boy
Columbia DB4747 1961 Goodbye Cruel World/ Next Time
Columbia DB4855 1962 Laughter Or Tears/ Like A Good Girl Should
Columbia DB945 1962 Poker Face/ Marianne
(Table and photographs courtesy of Ray Flight ~ hosted on www.fortunecity.com)