I had born with Rock N Roll in my blood and never give any room to others. According to my sister , I was full printed with eagles and Pentagram tatoo when my mother delivered (Ozzy Osbourne would cry listen this), and that's shows how stubborn rock n roll I am now.On the other hand, the melancholic part of me is I do watched P Ramlee’s movies but never pay attention to all his songs all this while .That’s sometimes have made my father angry when I always keep condemning P Ramlee as muzik orang tua-tua and it is outdated during my school time. Maklum lah darah muda. Yes the ratdaddy young at heartTrue enough, P Ramlee is not Marty Friedman or Jimi Hendrix but after watching The Bolshoi Ballet Theatre Orchestra of Tashkent who covers P.Ramlee's song at Philharmonic Hall , then I changed my mind. It was awesome and the bigband had really dig my ear to listen the quality songs. Since that, I beleive his songs is supposed to be crowned as the masterpiece of the archipelago region. Then I start to compare that P Ramlee actually is may be equal to Paul McCartney or also maybe equal to Frank Sinatra or may be better. But now I can say, all rock n roll superstars all over the world, are just dust and nothing compare to him.
While waiting for Miri for boarding, I transited to Wisma Sanyan, Sibu. After finishing my Nasi Lelapan, I went to Popular and the Bapaku P Ramlee which sat next to Karim Raslan's Ceritalah Malaysia 4 had captured my eyes. I grabbed the book and flipped as I find so many untold stories being described from his only blood son. It is in malay authored by Nasir P Ramlee who untalented in writing .But the way he write the book ,shows it is a very true , sincere and justified everything. Of course it won’t be as good as Jack Higgin or Kadir Jasin's writing but Nasir is the only living encyclopedia who only deserves to describe the his father. P Ramlee once made a film entitled Anakku Sazali (My Son Sazali) for his son and now the son Nasir P Ramlee has written a book titled Bapaku P Ramlee as a dedication to his father and all the words are based on his personal relation and experience.
Most stories here are being untold in any media. P Ramlee in his glory time is quite rich according to Nasir. He owned good cars,good house (given by Shaw Brothers),servants and everything but the fact he never save those thing for the rainy days is everybody knows. The words here are quite simple and that’s sound sincerity of Nasir as a son related to P Ramlee. The mahjong story is like an open secret to Malaysian as we 'd being told before that P Ramlee was God of gambler and that’s make he suffered till his death. P Ramlee is totally born as a great performer, good composer, film maker and what ever you name it but personally bad in running his own life and cash flows as well.
From, Nasir version described P Ramlee is a total fatherhood and he wants all his kids well educated. He hired three private teachers teach all his kids and at that time that’s considered expensive where not all people can afford to pay personal teachers to come home and give tuition. But Nasir is spoilt and school dropped out. Nasir is just like Sazali in Anakku Sazali except he never have a gun to shoot and rob people. He quitted studies at the very young age and starts his music career which considered gray and not many people can appreciate his music.
To Nasir, his entire father’s marriage failure is not because of him. It’s all being fated but the most reason is jealousy and the celebrity lifestyle. To what his words, his life at young when his fathers glitter’s time is considered rich and damn wealthy but they never save for the rainy days and that’s the result of Ramlee mati miskin and also fated to his anak- anak. Same goes to Saloma who was also kaki mahjong extreme.
P Ramlee is a failure bussinesmen and he never charge people on using his name for the bussines purpose. The not so stingy person have made him suffer a lot when he moved to KL where the globalisation of movie market have started in the early 70's. I can’t imagine if he still alive and understand what mass communication all about is, the open sky market of celebrity advertising and what is music campaign in capitalist open market.Well at least if he is not as wealthy as Ananda Krishnan, he must owned a production house . From what Nasir said in early page, his father only take two or three boxes of Lucky Strike's cigarettes as a commision for the billboard advertising. Just imagine it, if that happens now, Lucky Strike would be bankrupt by making fraud of product's ambassador deal. The key word I learn from this book is :- save your money for the future, teach the good lesson to kids,dont pampered them with money, expose them to religious and the most important thing, no matter how big your talent is, at the end money does count your life. Okay that’s it; I took only one hour from Sibu to Miri to finish the book. Sincere, sad ,awesome and four stars. Well at least I got a better impact rather than read Charles Dicken.
