Sook-ja Kim, February 12, 1996 and April 6, 1996: transcript

An Interview with Sook-ja Kim An Oral History Conducted by Myoung-ja Lee Kwon February - April 1996 ______________________________________________ Las Vegas Women in Gaming and Entertainment Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1997 ii Production of An Interview with Sook-ja Kim was made possible in part by a grant from the Nevada Humanities Committee. ?Myoung-ja Lee Kwon, 1997 Produced by: Las Vegas Women in Gaming and Entertainment Oral History Project Department of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas 89154-5020 Director: Joanne L. Goodwin Text Processor and Editor: Myoung-ja Lee Kwon iii iv v Preface 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 America was to perform at the Thunderbird Hotel for four weeks as part of the China Doll Revue, the main showroom program. This engagement led to a successful career. Their popularity reached 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 sisters. After his 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. Sook-ja 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 American were language, food, and cultural differences. Over the span of almost forty years in America, Sook-ja became acculturated without discarding her ethnic identity of family priorities. Her life-long guiding principle has been to adopt certain American values while continuing to keep her cherished Korean ethnic values. Through their performances, the Kim Sister 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 forty members of her extended family to the city, contributing to the growth of the Las Vegas Korean community.vi List of Illustrations vii An Interview with Sook-ja Kim An Oral History Conducted by Myoung-ja Lee Kwon February - April 1996 1 This is Myoung-ja Lee Kwon interviewing Sook-ja Kim of the "Kim Sisters" for the Las Vegas Women in Gaming and Entertainment Oral History Project at her house at 3789 Meadow Crest, Las Vegas, Nevada on February 12, 1996. Thank you so much for agreeing to interview with me and I wanted to reiterate that you gave us permission to use the information that we are recording today for scholarly and research activities. Thank you so much. I'm giving you this information, yes. We were looking one of the programs that we did on Channel 10 and the oral history project... Could you just stop that for a minute? As part of our oral history project it is important that we include so many different kinds of people who lived in Las Vegas and contributed to the growth of the city and would you tell me about, how you came to Las Vegas and what brought you and how you... How I started performing? That's right, as "Kim Sisters." Well, 1959 that we arrived in Las Vegas. I think it's January 20 that we had a show at the Thunderbird Hotel at the time. We don't have the Thunderbird Hotel anymore. That was our agent that who brought us to this country that he was producing a show at the Thunderbird Hotel. Name of the show was "China Doll Revue" so, what happened was, he came to Korea in 1958 to catch our show which we were performing for all of the GI shows, those days. So, you were Kim Sisters when you were in Korea? 2 Yes, we started, I started singing, I was eight and my mother and my father, naturally, you can see these pictures. My father was a symphony orchestra conductor, composer, director and my mother was, actually, biggest, famous singer. I remember your mom. Yi Nan-Young. Yes. So, everybody knows my mother. So, she was entertaining GI troops that time with her own group to feed us, actually, she had to support us by singing. One day she came to us, says, "I'm going to form the Kim Sisters, three of you." Were you the oldest? I'm the oldest out of the three girls. So, "I want you to memorize the song," [she told us.] We didn't speak English, we couldn't, we didn't even know where America was. So, you were supposed to sing in Korean? In English. In English I mean. We had to memorize. So, she will learn first then she will teach us this song that she got, I don't know where she got this song, but, name of the first song we sang was "Ole Buttermilk Sky." It's a country western song. We didn't even know there was country western, but we know that was American song. So, we memorize, we sing for the GIs and all the GIs loved it, so, what happened was, they say, "more, more, more!" We didn't learn next song. So, we came on again, we sang the same song over and over again. But, they didn't care as long as we sang American song. But that's how we started, to help our mother, to make it a little bit easier on her. So, how old were your other sisters? You were eight? 3 I was eight, Aija was seven and Mia was six, actually. That's how little we were, very, very, little. As a matter of fact, we started in 1954 in Korea.1 Until 1954 to 1958, we sang for the GI troops all the time. That's how we got to eat. Plain language, that's how we survived. Sure, exactly. Because our house was burned down to the ground during the war. So, all this show we were performing, all the GIs were talking about the Kim Sisters are good. So, if they go to America, they will make a lot of money. So, we didn't know where America was, you know, we just, we were happy to sing for our mother and just that. We loved the music. However, 1958, Tom Ball, our manager heard about the Kim Sisters in Los Angeles, through one of the GIs that came back from Korea. He asked agent who was also in Japan, named Dan Sawyer, which he lives in Las Vegas now. I been friends with him for over 35 years. He told Tom Ball to go to Korea and take a look at the Kim sisters. So, that's how Tom Ball came, but see, from '54 to '58, all the American soldier would come to us, "I'll take you to America," so, we thought one of these days, we're going to go to America. My mother knew that there is a limitation in Korea, how much we could learn. She want us to go to America and learn more about entertainment. That's how open she was. So, anyway, so many GIs lied to us, not lied, it's a big responsibility. They didn't know. Big responsibility, now I understand. Sure. 1 Her calculation for their ages was incorrect. Sook-ja was born in 1941 which makes her 13 years old in 1954. 4 So, they would go back to America and we would never hear from them. So, we had so many false hopes and disappointments. All right, so, that was until Tom Ball showed up. He liked us. We signed a contract with him. That's when we came, 1959. When you signed a contract with him, how did you understand the contract? We didn't. We signed because my mother had to sign the contract. Releasing you? Yes, she had to sign all the contract. We had to go to America. We had to be at the American Embassy, that's where we signed the contract. We were all under age. We were too young, so she did all the signing and we came to America with her consent, said, we could come. So, she stayed and you came? Yes, yes. She stayed in Korea. We had the rest of the family there. So, we just came with three Sook-ja, Ai-ja, Min-ja. Then, there's a gentleman named Bob McMackin was like a road manager type. I see. So, he came and we got to know him. How did you find him? Well, he found us. He said let me be your road manager. So, he talked to Tom Ball and he, and we, just, we couldn't even communicate. We couldn't speak English anyway. That's how we came. When you came to America, where did you come first? 5 First, we landed in Los Angeles and in Los Angeles everybody said you will see the movie star walking around the street. So, we opened the window, we sat by the window all day long and no movie star passed by. Do you remember where you were? Very well. It's like a Wilshire Boulevard, somewhere, little apartment and we sat there, three of us, at the window looking for the movie star and we couldn't find one. So, the next day we had to come. We drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. That was the funny part. Our manager, Tom Ball, agent was driving, I think it was a Cadillac, black car, whatever, through the desert, simply nothing there. We said, "where are you taking us?" We didn't know where... Were you scared? No, we totally, we were too young to realize what's going on. So, we just sat in the back of the seat and we said to each other, "I don't think that this is America, do you?" We're saying in Korean. So, we got here, Las Vegas, and when the night time, all that, you know, when the sun went down, we see the glitter and the light and the hotel, O.K., there was... How many hotels were there? Let me tell you. The Sahara was here. Thunderbird was here. Stardust was here. Sands was here. Hacienda was here. I think that was it. That was it. The strip was really empty then. Empty, nothing. Just this hotel, El Rancho, that burned down, it was here. That's about it. That's all I can remember. Where did you find a place to live? 6 O.K. Across the street from Sahara Hotel they had Robinson Apartments. We stayed in the one bedroom, three of us, one living room and a kitchen. Did you stay with a grown-up? No. Just the three of us. You took care of your younger sisters? Right. So we just, three of us, and our road manager were next store, apartment. So, he kind of took us here and there, but that's where we stayed. Let me tell you how much we got paid. We got paid a month, we signed a contract, $400 among three of us, a month. We ate, we had a Robinson apartment, we send some money to Korea. That was 36 years [ago]. That's how we started our career. How many shows did you, would you tell me about, like where you started and what kind of performance you did, how often? Well, we were doing, actually, 1959 was all rock-and-roll. We sang all rock-and-roll. How did you learn all the songs? Through the GIs. They gave us a donut [single] that played, you know. The 45. Yeah, we memorized, we hear, we memorize, this is how we sing. But then, before we left, my mother says to us, eight months before, she sat us down, first of all we couldn't get the passport from here because our father was captured by North Koreans, all right, so they have killed him among the other prisoners, however, we didn't have accurate news how he died. So, therefore, Korean government, South Korean government, would not give us visa to come to America. They were afraid, they thought our father was alive and was active in North Korea. So, therefore, they would not give us a visa. We had a very bad time. So, my mother did, I don't know what 7 she did and she got the visa and that's how we came. So, therefore, first of all, coming to America was like, you could go to the sky and get the star out. That's how hard it was. So, when we came here, first of all, it's just like a dream came true. We could not believe that we were here. Then Thunderbird Hotel was all Oriental act, like I told you before. "China Doll Revue," Chinese, Japanese, Korean, it's all international show. We sang all rock-and-roll. Our part was to go on stage, do 30 minutes of our own act in the big production show. We did two shows a night for four weeks. Now after the four weeks, the engagement was over. Either we got to go back to Korea or somebody going to pick up the option. This is where we were. That's right. I remember one day, we were rehearsing with the band. We brought music from Korea and it's not precise, not like printed nice, you know how Korean... So musicians were all laughing and looking down at us. I see. So, you know, as Koreans, we felt, oh my gosh, they're fingering at us. We don't know the English, we don't know how to talk. So, we sat in the corner and cried. That's all we did. Then one of the Japanese dancers that I never forget her face, she will come to us and say, "Sue san, don't worry," she says, "some day you will be big star." I didn't know what she was talking about at the time. So, she comforted us. We were among the Chinese, Japanese, all these people, we performed two shows a night. Then, Stardust Hotel, entertainment director came saw our show and picked Kim Sisters out. We would like to have Kim Sisters at the Stardust Hotel. That's how we began. 8 Because you didn't mention the Thunderbird part in the panel discussion. So, I was all along, that you started at that point. That's how Stardust came to pick us up, our option. We went directly from four weeks Thunderbird to Stardust Hotel. We signed two weeks with an option and we stayed there for eight and one-half months. How often did you do..? We did six shows a night. Thank God, we were young. We, all we did was we ate, we worked, we rehearsed. The important part that I left, we are going back now, Korea, is before we left, our mother says, "Sue, we're having a hard time, the passport, you know, the visa, we're getting it. I want you girls to learn the instruments." All right? We didn't understand why. She said, "they have the Maguire Sisters," which we copied in Korea, all their songs. They called us Korean Maguire Sisters. Andrew Sisters, we copied them. So, my mother says, "those girls do not play instruments. Just to sing you will not become successful in America." Oh, how insightful. Yes. So, I want you to learn the tenor sax, I want Ai-ja to learn alto sax, I want Mia to learn drums. We didn't have a rehearsal. Our house was burned down to the ground, but we had all burned-out brick wall changko [storage shack]. That's where we rehearsed, in there. That's how we learned to play instruments and how well, how right she was. So, when we came here, we played instrument so we were different from Maguire Sister and Andrew Sister. This is why the Stardust picked us up. And she says, you got to learn all Korean instruments. I remember, Kayakeum, Chang-ku, Seungmoo-book [Korean traditional instruments].2 And the ballet, she said, I want you 2 Kayakeum is a Korean traditional string instrument which requires a player sitting on the floor while playing. Chang-ku and Seungmoo-book are drums that have straps so that a 9 to learn everything there is to learn. So, one time she gave us a bus ride, money, and it would carry the Kayageum with us. Cold winter, so, we going to teacher, Kayakeum teacher and we saw one of that Chinese mandoo [steamed rolls stuffed with meat or vegetables] and, you know, glass 'kim yi murok murok naneun kot' [They saw Chinese steamed rolls just coming out of the cooker steaming through the glass shop window]. They look so delicious. I said, "you know what? We're going to walk and we're going to buy that. This is how we survived. We got money that she gave us. We ate that instead of riding on the bus. This is all my mother say you got to learn. We were performing with a Kayakeum beginning. So, did you bring Kayakeum here too? Oh, yes and chang-ku and seungmoo-book, we brought all that. So, beginning of the show, we would wear Korean costume which I will show you that picture. We would wear the Korean costume. Inside we had a Chinese gown, so, after Kayageum we'd take it off and then we'd do American songs. It looked really different. That's how our career started to begin. So, my mother was right. When we were in the Stardust Hotel, eight and one half months, we learned different instruments. Now, we learn banjo. Now, we learn marimba. Now, we learn different instruments, one by one that we rehearse. We did six shows, sleep, eat, we carry our own lunches in a make-up case. We didn't know what to make. Ai-ja got yellow hwang-dal [jaundice]. Oh, jaundice. Because we couldn't have kimchee. The food was a big battle. We could not get kimchee in those days. We could not make it, we could not buy it. So, we were player can carry them while played. They are usually played while a player dances at the same time. They are used in Korean folk dancing. 10 literally sick about our food. We used to pick up the phone and cry to our mother. We needed kimchee. She got sick, very bad. So, we would carry her on stage because if she doesn't perform then we have to pack up and go back. We had no choice. You know, the show must go on in show business. You know why? There's no substitute in show business. It doesn't matter, you're sick or not, you got to be on. So, this is why a lot of people asking me today, how could you be so mentally, physically strong. It made me strong through the years. My business did. Tell us, just to continue on, how you begin with the Stardust and what next? How you grew up? You were a child, you were children. We were children, but, you know, we really, I don't even know how we grew up. I don't even remember. All I know, the year that we worked 365 days, except for traveling. We couldn't afford to stop working. While we're in the Stardust, now we're going back, eight and one half months, Ed Sullivan came in. That was the big break for us. So, Ed Sullivan came in and saw our act. At that time he had an international show. Every country, he bring people. We were at the right time, right place and timing was great. So, he saw our show. I'd like to have these girls on my show. First show we did with Ed Sullivan, he brought all the crews to the Stardust Hotel at the main showroom. That's where we performed. It was immediately, we were a hit. Ai-ja played the base, big standard base. I played the tenor sax and Mia played the drums. We sang, song the Maguire Sisters made the biggest hit, "Sincerely." We sound just like them. You could not even tell, the sound was so much like them, Maguire Sister. Even now, I hear our tape and I say to myself, gosh, we sound just like them. This is beginning of our career, yes. So, when we got on Ed 11 Sullivan Show, naturally, those days, everybody close down the door and watch Ed Sullivan. That's right. Even in Korea we used to watch Ed Sullivan Show. Right, so, whole country were nationwide watching Kim Sisters, just name spread. Vancouver, Chicago, all these cities, "we want the Kim Sisters," so, booking was coming in. From Stardust we went to Lake Tahoe. We performed at Lake Tahoe. From Lake Tahoe to Chicago. Now, no airplane, we drove. We drove, our road manager drove, we sat in the car for three or four days. That's how we used to travel. So, road manager acted as if he were your legal guardian, in a way. Yes, but you know sad part was with this man was? His name was Bob McMackin. Sad part was we looked up to him in Korea, like God, but when we left with him, we were so frightened. We couldn't give our affection to him. So, he just kind of, all we think about is scared. This man's very scared, without our mother. So, we didn't have such good relationship with this man. Now, if we'd have grown a little bit more, we probably would have. All we knew was we can't have anything without him. So, we couldn't speak English, we couldn't do anything business. He did everything. Was he a good person to take care of? Yes, he was very good person but later on we found that he took advantage of us. We had to end up to get rid of him. So, it got really ugly toward the end, but, that's a different matter. So, we went to Chicago and, as a matter of fact, he's from Chicago, road manager. He took us to the farm, his mother lives, which we like her very much. They fed us, they were very, very good to us and we saw the farm, pig and cow and all that. That's when the Life Magazine, right there. Life Magazine wanted to do a Kim Sisters story. So, we took a photographer to the farm with us. They shoot 2,500 12 pictures of us, including performances. Out of that, six pictures appeared in the Life Magazine. What year was that? 1962. [verified as Feb. 22, 1960 issue of Life Magazine] You were still just barely... Yes, we were teenagers. So, all right, now Kim Sisters has a ponytail and they were really, truly, American people didn't know from kimono, the Chinese dress, to Korean dress. They all call it kimono, whatever we wore, you know that. So, we used to wear Korean costume, 120 degrees in Las Vegas, 'Boson kaji sinko' [even wearing cotton padded Korean socks] walking down trying to advertize, we are from Korea. But you know what people said? "Oh, what a beautiful kimono! "It's not kimono, it's a Korean dress! [we told them.] Nobody knew where Korea was at that time. So, you know what we said? As we become famous, they will know automatically where we're from. That's exactly what happened. Kim Sisters, where they from? Korea. That's how that happened. See, even in the beginning, we could tell them 100 times, this is not kimono. They would not know. They keep calling kimono until we appeared in Ed Sullivan Show with Korean costume, with Korean instrument, then they start to seeing it, oh, that's Korean. O.K. So, one Korean called us like, we did more than even Korean Ambassador for the country at that time. So, this is what they were saying. So, Kim, tell me about how you managed to learn and get education while you are doing the performing? Your English is so good. How did you learn to do that? Just communicating with the people. You know, my children laugh at me. I think Korean, you know, inside. Then I speak English and they crack so many jokes about 13 me it's not even funny. So, one day I told my husband, you know what, my kids are getting bigger, I want to learn the right English. So, I want to go to UNLV. Second Language as English [English as Second Language], I want to learn. Do you know what happened to me? The English is toughest language. The more I learned the more I got confused. My English got worse. My husband says to me, I don't think you should go to school any more. Your English is fine, don't go, you're totally confused. I'll never forget that. What we did was, we watch T.V., we talked to people, our job, we always had to talk to people and we had to learn how to speak ourselves. That's what we did. You did such a marvelous job. Thank you. Tell me about your family. Then how you... Brothers? Brothers and sisters and how you became, when you got married and your children? Now then, 1963, as a matter of fact, my mother give me strict order, "you are the older of the three girls, you girls, I don't allow you to date until you become 23. If I tell you, someday you will understand," she said. "When you have men getting involved in your life. [end of first side] My mother says, "you're not allowed to date because when three girls, usually a group break up when a man get involved between you." She was very wise woman and I say that on tape. You will hear it. So, I obey that. Four years later, finally my mother got the visa. She came over. Now, how that happen? We got in very, very closeness with Ed Sullivan, Mr. Ed Sullivan requested our mother is very well known singer in Korea and she's coming in and would you give her a visa so she could come over and 14 sing, sing with us on your show. He says, "fine." So, he send the visa, she came over. She was on the Ed Sullivan show, just my mother and three of us. She toured with us eight months. She sing with us every night on stage. I remember very clearly when we say our mother is in the audience, the audience would automatically stand up and give her applause and she was like 90, like your size. Such a tiny lady, came on stage and sang with us, eight months. Now she says to me, "I'm going back to Korea." I says, "why? Why can't you stay with us here?" "You have brothers. I'd like to form the group as 'Kim Brothers'. Send them over to you." So, you are the oldest of all? No. We are seven children. I'm the third one, but my mother made me the leader of the family. Her instinct was there that I was stronger minded, I took care of the family and she gave me in a nice way that you would take care of your brothers and sisters. So, that's how I got my responsibility for my family; however, she says to me, I didn't even know after I left Korea, '59, that my brother was already singing. I had no idea. They were going to school. You see, my brothers always talk about, I remember, the Kim Sister, "you know, you are the leader, you send us money every month. We went to school, we supposed to finish school but we didn't, we were singing," and I didn't know that. So, my mother, when she went back, she send me a tape of my brother playing saxophone. I listened probably 100 times and cried, cried, oh my gosh, my brother, this is my brother? I could not believe it. She says, now, "I'm going back, I'm going to send them to you." So, I requested once again to Ed Sullivan, my brother is singing for GI troops in Korea, they are ready to come here and I would like to perform with them in the show, your show. O.K., he send a visa. 1963, November, my mother left, she send the Kim Brothers. 15 How Many? Three, three brothers. I still have an older sister, older brother in Korea. Oh, you do? Yes, and six people here. 1963. So, she says to me, "this are your responsibility." Now, I have five person on my shoulder. Yes, and you were barely twenty? I think I was 21, yes, and it was hard. So, my mother says to me, you got to take care of these brothers and sisters. O.K., whatever mother said, I did. 1964, my mother passed away. She had a tough life. She passed away and I was supposed to go home to funeral. We had a concert with Ed Sullivan. My manager called me in L.A., I had a ticket in my hand, all my, you know, family, and my brother calls me, "are you coming to the funeral?" I'm sitting there on that table with my manager, crying my eyes out, what do I do? If I go back Korea, I might not come back. Those days of visa... Because of visa? Yes. So, my manager says, if your mother was alive, what she would want you to do? Go and perform. You knew. That was difficult, the hardest decision in my life that I had to make because the Korean people think I'm disrespectful, but I have five persons to support. What am I supposed to do? So, my manager finally got into my head that I had to go to New York and perform for my brothers and keep going on. We make name for ourselves. So, your base was where? In Las Vegas? 16 Las Vegas was our, we had a little co-op. We bought a little co-op apartment on Cincinnati, 331 West Cincinnati, bad neighborhood now. I don't think it's a good neighborhood. Something changed to something totally, little apartment we had. So, you managed your brothers and sisters? Everybody, all that, yes. So, now I had to become a Kim Brothers manager. So, when your brothers came, you became a manager. Did you face any kind of difficulties acting as a manager and a..? Only thing that I will say that difficult, wasn't that difficult because we already had a name, Kim Sisters. So, they will hire my brothers expecting they're like us, but it wasn't. One day, we are sitting at that Riviera Hotel lounge, I booked them over there, lounge, and we sit there. Nobody was there, but three of us applauding. I thought they were the greatest. They were not, but..[laughter] and my manager always talk about, "you should have seen Sue, Mia and Ai-ja, they thought they were the greatest, they were applauding." We laugh about this. When Kim Brothers came in New York hotel that all the funny thing happened that they couldn't speak English and they would order spaghetti. I told them to, if we go to work, they going to be alone in the hotel, so, what we do, if we hungry, so dial the room service and order it and one time they order spaghetti and I don't know what they did, they kept ordering it because it didn't come. So, nine, twelve spaghetti came at one time in the hotel room and all these funny things happening, you know, so, I mean, we just, even now we sit down and we talk about past and we laugh. But, it wasn't easy, but, it wasn't that hard. They were coming just foot step after us. And by the time they came, you were, more or less, settled in American way and you understood a lot better. 17 Yes, we had a contract with the Stardust. Every year we would perform here eight and one-half months. I see, so then, after that then the rest of the year was yours traveling. So, you had to make sure that... Kim Brothers was taken care of. In '65, I met my husband. 1965 we were appearing at the Americana Hotel. He came to see our show and he came every night for eight days straight with a different woman and sat and watched us. I knew that he liked one of us, I don't know which one. [laugh] That was my real life started. So, I met him and I had like five dinners, different places, then I had to go to Europe. See, in our job, we meet a man, but by the time we find out what kind of man he is, we have to say good-bye. We have to keep going and I will not take anybody those years before my family because my family was important to me. How did you explain to your man? I didn't. I didn't, if you want to take us to dinner of something, take me for dinner, either you got to take all three of us. Oh, no, and nobody goes. That was our set rule. Then when I met my husband, I told him the five dinner we had and I had to go to Europe. We had to go to Italy, Monte Carlo, Spain, Paris, we perform all over there. So, I said good-bye and he thought that was the end of it, our relationship, you know. Then when I went to Milano, something was there that I liked this man so much that I called him. It took me... From Milano. That time it was real... Three and one-half days it took me, but I got through. So, when he got the call from me, he's thinking was changing. Oh, maybe, I thought it was, everything was, you know, done, but I guess... 18 How old were you? Let's see, '65? 24, yes. Then, that time, yes. So, we went out, John and I seeing each other now. I can't come to him because I was performing. He came every city, every weekend. Wow! All over. Wow! What a... Romantic. He's a really, really, and every time I go to different city there was flowers waiting for me from him and he flew everywhere to see me. You name it. What does he do, what did he do then? He was doing at the time, he was working with his father manufacturing sporting goods. So, he kind of had his own business. I could see them now. He'd be able to get away on weekend, but the flower bill and the airplane bill, I thought, look at all the money he spent. He said, "I could have been millionaire." So, even he come to New Orleans. We hit the "Patsy Hurricane," 1965, he was there for me. So, that's the only way that we made it. If he didn't come, we probably wouldn't be together today. So, when did you get married? 1968. Oh, so it took you for a while. My sister got married 1967, both of them. Oh, you made sure that your sister were married? Yes. It was my, you know, goal that I send my sisters first, then I be last one. But, you still performed as a group and you...? 19 Yes. It was difficult because once my sisters got involved with men, they both were drummers. They wanted to come into our act, but I knew, my mother told me, "don't ever put the men in your, you know, groups." You know what I told them, I can't hire either one of you because you're both drummers. So, I'm sorry, we hire somebody else. This is why we kept going. And I told my husband when I met him, "do not interfere with my business." We had a very clear understanding. He never wanted to anyway. He had his own business. So, this is why we kept going on because, now, three becomes six. Too hard to do business and my mother was right. My mother was very wise. That's what we did. Nobody can come into the Kim Sister group. So, how long did you have a contract with the Stardust? Fifteen years. So, that would be? 1974 was the last year. Was that before Stardust became a corporation? Before, right before. Then we went to the Las Vegas Hilton. I have a picture with that. Elvis Presley wa