Sip Hok Pi Haeng Khwam Lang

Suraphol Sombatcharoen first got into trouble for singing. As a young navy nursing student he kept slipping out at night to perform, until his commander caught him and locked him in the navy prison, where he became a hero to the other inmates by singing them to sleep. After his release he moved to the air force, where an officer heard him at a party and persuaded him to join the military band. His first hit, in 1954, marked the emergence of luk thung, Thailand's country-crooning style, and by the 1960s no Thai performer was better known. People called him the King of Luk Thung, and sometimes the Thai Elvis. He wrote more than a hundred songs, but the one that outlived him was Sip Hok Pi Haeng Khwam Lang, which translates as 16 Years of Our Past. It is a sad song about the end of his own sixteen-year marriage, looking back on both the happiness and the bitterness of the union. It became perhaps his most popular song. Shortly after it came out, on 16 August 1968, Suraphol was shot dead by an unknown assailant after a performance in Nakhon Pathom. He was 37, and the motive has never been established. The song's sixteen years have since taken on numerological meaning for many Thais. On the 33rd anniversary of his death, his 16-year-old grandson Surabodin made his debut before a packed hall at the Thailand Cultural Centre, singing 16 Years of Our Past.