Dig Deep: Frankie Gao – A Girl’s Dimples – Kolin (197?)

Frankie Kao – A Girl’s Dimples
Frankie Kao – Fallen Leaves
Frankie Kao – I Am A Cloud

This was a record that I was sure I would have posted almost immediately when I first picked it up from Avalon Vintage in Highland Park. Better late than never, and so when Subsuelo member DJ Gazoo recently asked me about this album, it made sense to get it up here at the tail end of Year Nine. I mean, we say don’t judge a book by its cover, but there was no way a record with a cover that amazing, with a singer that demonstrative was not gonna be dope. I honestly don’t know much about Frankie Kao aka Kao Ling Feng (sometimes also spelled Gao Ling Feng), but from the little I’ve dug up, he was a Taiwanese singer (who fairly recently passed away in 2014) with a solid following. Solid enough for the record to include this gigantic and rather awesome poster of Kao, chilling with a hang-glider.

This album appears to be from around 1977, give or take a year to two, just based off of catalog numbers for the Kolin record label. It’s got a sound that’s all over the place, (including a fairly faithful cover of “Jailhouse Rock,”) but the standout is the lead track and title track, “A Girl’s Dimples.” The opening break might not be up to snuff of Hip-Hop production standards, but it has a nice, sorta “Honky-Tonk Girl’s” kind of sound to it. I’ve dropped the needle on this at Funky Sole a couple of times and it is definitely a crowd-pleaser and draws a lot of puzzled looks, mostly because of how reasonably rare it is to hear Manadrin on the dance floor. As I don’t speak this dialect, I have to rely on the powers of Google Translate for the song titles and if anyone has more to add, I’d love to know more about Frankie Kao.