The year is 1960, and The Kim Sisters have set the Vegas Strip afire with rich harmonies and an ability to play dozens of instruments.
The sisters had been in the United States only two short years at the legendary Thunderbird—after singing for American GI’s during and after the Korean War. From there, they became a staple of Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, booking clubs across the United States and appearing a record 22 times on the Ed Sullivan Show. Join us as we trace the meteoric rise of The Kim Sisters—from singing for chocolate bars in war-torn Korea to making $13,000 a week as headline entertainers—with a special montage from The Fabulous Kim Sisters and sister Sue Kim Bonifazio sharing her Stardust.
The Kim Sisters, a Korean female trio who made their career in U.S. during 1950s and 60s, sings “Try To Remember” for Monument Records.
The Kim Sisters were Sook-ja, Mi-a and Ai-ja. They started their career as the entertainers, singing for U.S. troops in Korea in 1954. They were the three of the seven children of Kim Hae-song ( 김해송, 1911 – 1950), a classical music conductor and popular composer who was captured and killed by the North Koreans during the Korean War, and Lee Nan-Young (1916 – 1967), one of Korea’s most famous singers before the World War II, best known for her 1935 nationwide hit song, “The Tears from Mokpo”.
Lee had been singing for the foreign troops, to earn enough money for them to survive, when one day she got the idea of having three of her daughters sing, too. The girls did not know English at that time, so they learned the songs phonetically. Just 13, 12 and 11 years old at the time, the first song they sang was the Hoagy Carmichael’s “Ole’ Buttermilk Sky”.
The show went well and soon the sisters were singing regularly, all the popular music and early rock’n'roll of the day. Soldiers would give them chocolate bars, which in turn they would trade in for real food on the black market, but it was enough to get by.
In 1958 they were discovered by an American agent who booked them into the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas, as part of a show called the China Doll Review. The three of them earned $400 a month. After a month at the Thunderbird, they were picked up by another Vegas hotel, the Stardust, where they played for eight months.
In 1959 they got their big break when they were asked to play on the Ed Sullivan Sho, and being on his show made the Kim Sisters a nationally known act.
Over the next 14 years, they would perform on Ed Sullivan 22 times, the most of any performer who appeared Ed Sullivan show. They were featured in LIFE and NEWSWEEK and other magazines. Far from singing for chocolate bars, the Kim Sisters eventually were making around $13,000 a week.
They kept performing in Vegas and elsewhere for years, although after they got married in the 1970s, the act pretty much came to an end. Ai-ja died in 1987 of lung cancer, but they other two sisters are still alive and living in the United States.
There’s a oral history document – an interview record with Sook-ja Kim, made by some Korean researchers in University of Las Vegas.
Friday April 11, 2008
Blast From the Past: Kim Sisters Rock the States
Sandra Lee
Imagine a Korean sister act capturing the heart of American pop culture by singing "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog". It may sound far-fetched today, but that's exactly what America was seeing on the Ed Sullivan show in 1959.
Sue Kim was 9 years old when she and her sisters, Ai Ja and Mia, started singing for American GIs in the midst of the Korean War. The girls' mother, who was once Korea's top recording artist, selected country western songs for the girls including "Ole Buttermilk Sky" and "Candy and Cake".
Looking back, Kim said, "I don't know where she came up with these songs."
Because the girls did not speak a word of English, they learned to memorize the songs phonetically.
"We kept memorizing songs without knowing what they meant," Kim said. "All these beautiful songs, but we didn't know what the hell we were singing."
Luckily, the GIs didn't care. Hearing the familiar melodies was enough. And once the sisters expanded their repertoire to include Elvis Presley songs, hearing the lyrics "You can burn my house, you can steal my car . . . " coming from three young girls was no doubt a riot.
"When we learned 10 years later what the lyrics meant, we thought, Oh my God, what were we singing?"
In 1958, an American agent caught the girls' performance and booked them for a four-week engagement at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas. The show was so good that other hotels in the area immediately booked the act. The temporary job ended up turning into a lifelong career.
The girls' next break came only a year later when Ed Sullivan got wind of the sister act and booked them on his show. Their appearance was a hit, and soon calls started pouring in from Dinah Shore and Steve Allen requesting the sister act. Over the years, the Kim Sisters would appear on the Ed Sullivan show a total of 22 times.
"We really had no clue how big we were," Kim says. "We were just grateful to be working. We ate, we worked, and we sent money to our family in Korea. [My sisters and I] shared a one-room apartment, and we thought it was just great."
Although their family had once been prosperous in Korea, the war had left them impoverished. Their father, Hae Song Kim, was an acclaimed symphony orchestra conductor, but was shot by the North Korean army for consorting with American soldiers.
Because of the Kim Sisters' enormous popularity in the United States, the girls did not take a single day off in their first year in the country. Their fan club eventually grew to include stars like Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee.
All three of the sisters had married by the mid-1970s, and the group inevitably began to fall apart. In 1987, Ai Ja died of lung cancer, and Mia and Sue have since become estranged. Sue, who continued performing with her brothers, was in a car accident a few years ago, leaving her unable to perform on stage.
Since then, she has put together a documentary film on The Kim Sisters' meteoric rise to fame, and Koreana News, based in Los Angeles, has compiled a book on this important footnote in entertainment history.
Sue Kim now works as a real estate agent. "I love it. It's just like show business – you're constantly meeting and dealing with people."
Kim is impressed by the Asian Americans in entertainment today, and is an avid fan of Lucy Liu. Despite the current lack of diversity in entertainment, Kim believes that it is impossible to ignore true talent.
"If you have talent, people will accept it," Kim said.
Her only regret is that The Kim Sisters did not promote their album sufficiently – a move that could have made their fame more lasting.
"At the time, we were too busy working and nobody really thought about it," she said. Although the girls did make a record, it was not properly promoted and did not catch on.
But when asked if she would like to be 17 years old again, Kim said, "Hell no, I worked too hard when I was 17."
The Kim sisters, composed of three sisters, Sook-ja, Ai-ja, and Mia, came from Korea to Las Vegas in February, 1959. Their first contract in American was to perform at the Thunderbird Hotel for four weeks as part of the China Doll Revue, the main showroom program. This engagement led them to a successful career. Their popularity was at its height at the end of the 1960s, when they performed throughout the United States and Europe. Sook-ja Kim is the oldest of the Kim Sisters. After her sister Ai-ja died in 1987, Sook-ja teamed up with her two brothers and continued to perform until 1989. Now semi-retired from show business, with occasional performances in Korea, she is working as a real estate agent. In this interview, she talked about her childhood, her career, and the family she has built since coming to America.
She was born in 1941 in Seoul, Korea, as the third child of seven in a musical family. Her father was a conductor, and her mother, a popular singer. After the Korean War, her mother arranged to send the Kim Sisters to America. When they came to Las Vegas, there were virtually no Koreans in the area. They depended on each other to take care of themselves. Some of the difficulties they had to adjust to in America were language, food, and cultural differences. Over the span of almost forty years in America, Sook-ja became acculturated without discarding her ethnic identity or family priorities. Her life-long guiding principle has been to combine certain American values while continuing to keep cherished Korean ethnic values.
Through their performances, the Kim Sisters informed the audience about Koreans and their culture. As the oldest of the group, Sook-ja was entrusted the care of her sisters, and later her brothers, the Kim Brothers. Once she settled in Las Vegas, she brought more than 40 members of her extended family, contributing to the growth of the Las Vegas Korean community.
Updated: Thursday, 12-Jul-2007 11:28:20 PDT
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Page Editor: Yunkin, Michael
The Kim Sisters were the first of a series of Korean harmony singers, and perhaps they were the most talented too. No reissues yet.
