“Mr. Ooi is one of a handful of non-Malays involved in a predominantly Malay business: ‘Playing Malay music and appreciating it is something that has grown on me over the years. I can sit down and play any sort of traditional Malay tune on the spur of the moment. I have them all categorised in my mind.’” 

“Keep Evolving” Malay Mail, 5 November 1982

"ONE DAY, out of the blue, my father bought a piano and forced me to learn it.” And like the obedient son he was, Eow Jin readily complied. “Learning was not a choice—I was told to do it and I did it. I didn’t enjoy the piano lessons because I had to play classical tunes, which I found boring,” he shared.

When Ooi Eow Jin reached Grade 3 in piano, his father arranged for him to take accordion lessons from David Ng, the son of a close friend.  After just a few lessons, David moved to Singapore to pursue his own musical career—he went on to become a renowned jazz pianist in Europe. Despite the short duration, the accordion lessons left a lasting impression; David had taught and encouraged him to play popular songs and to develop his own style.

Born on 3 June 1938, Eow Jin started his education at Wellesley Primary School for two years before moving to Westlands School and then Penang Free School (1952– 1955), where he obtained his Cambridge School Certificate.

In the mid-1950s, Eow Jin’s musical journey took off unexpectedly at his Form Five farewell dance, where Robert Tan’s band, Roy Hits and the Jolly Amigos, was performing. The accordion player happened to be his Malay language teacher in his school, and he knew that Eow Jin played the instrument. He asked Eow Jin to sit in with the band. Tan noticed his talent, and that he could play the popular songs of the day. After the event, he invited Eow Jin to join the band’s practice sessions, which he did, marking the beginning of his musical journey.

Eow Jin joined the band—his first— and played the accordion and the piano (if one was available at the venue). The Jolly Amigos was a popular band of that period, performing at various functions and holding a steady gig at the Chinese Swimming Club (CSC).

Joining the band opened a door to another world for Eow Jin, leading him to play nights at a cabaret club on Noordin Street and joining Albert Yeoh’s band at the E&O Hotel on weekends, whilst holding down a stable daytime job as an English teacher and later, as a government clerk in the survey department.

One day, he heard the Ted Heath Orchestra playing an orchestrated version of “Begin the Beguine” on the radio. It inspired him to explore and learn music arrangement. To improve his basic musical skills, he bought books on the subject, and when he heard that Radio Malaya had started an orchestra, he began sending his arrangements to Alfonso Soliano, the orchestra leader. Soliano tried out the arrangements with the orchestra and found them to be quite good.

In 1962, Eow Jin won first prize in Radio Malaya’s inaugural national tune-writing contest with his song “Rusohan Kalbu”. He was the only Chinese winner with a Malay-titled song, suggested by a friend. Eow Jin confessed at a later interview that he didn’t know what the title meant, but used it because it sounded nice.

The following year, Soliano travelled to Penang with the Radio Malaya Orchestra. He sought out Eow Jin, and told him that he liked the arrangements that he sent. Soliano invited him to join the Orchestra as he needed a piano player. Though it meant leaving a stable and pensionable government job—many friends advised against it—Eow Jin decided to embrace this opportunity to start a new chapter in his life. He was earning less than $200 as a clerk, and the salary working with the orchestra was $700 (on a contract basis)—the huge difference in earnings and the opportunity to work with the nation’s top orchestra and musicians were too good to pass up. It was a decision he never regretted.

With the Radio Malaya Orchestra, Eow Jin performed at numerous government functions for the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and other heads of state, and led the RTM Combo with P. Ramlee, Saloma, S.M. Salim, Hamzah Dolmat, Kamariah Noor and others for a three-week tour to 21 forward operating bases of the Malaysian army throughout the country in 1965.

Eow Jin left the RTM Orchestra in 1967; he felt he couldn’t get any further in his career on a temporary contract. He decided to try his hand as a commercial musician in the nightclub circuit, leading combos in KL hotels—Federal, Hilton and Regent. The longest stint he held was a four-year gig with his own seven-piece band at Mirama Hotel. The hotel’s restaurant had a floor show every night and the band had two singers—one who sang in Chinese and a Filipino singer who sang in English.

He occasionally returned to Penang to play with Robert Tan’s band at the Ambassador Hotel. On one of his trips back to Penang, sometime in 1969, he met up with drummer Tony Perkins, who had returned for a break in Penang from Bangkok. Tony invited him to play with a band that he was putting together for a US Air Force base club in Thailand, catering to American soldiers on leave from Vietnam. The quartet consisted of Tony Perkins (drums), George Baum (guitar), Jack (a Thai musician on bass) and Eow Jin on piano. He played with the band for six months before returning to KL.

In 1974, when the RTM Orchestra had an opening for a senior musician cum arranger, Eow Jin took up the post. This second stint with the Orchestra lasted a decade. During this period, he also represented Malaysia with an original composition at the first Korean Song Festival in 1979, led bands for performances at Seri Perdana for visiting dignitaries such as Nancy Reagan, the Prime Ministers of Turkey, Cambodia, etc., and was Combo leader for the Department of Tourism and Malaysia Airlines, promotional shows in Korea, Dubai, Amsterdam, Taiwan and Kuwait that same year. When Johari Salleh left RTM in 1983, Eow Jin co-led the RTM Orchestra with Gus Steyn for 14 months.

Eow Jin’s Discography

Eow Jin was the leader of the backing band for the Bakat TV & Bintang RTM competitions from 1974 to 1984. He recalled that he was doing the arrangement for the medley of “Cabaret” and “Big Spender” for Sudirman for the 1976 Bintang RTM finals, and felt that “there was something special about Sudirman, he was different from the other contestants; he knew exactly what he wanted for the medley and I just put it together for him in a full Broadway-style arrangement.” Sudirman proceeded to go on and win that year’s competition, and Eow Jin had the opportunity to produce and contribute to the title track for Sudirman’s first recording “Teriring Doa”. One of Eow Jin’s other compositions that Sudirman later recorded and which became a hit was “Gerimis di Lautan” in 1979.

In addition to his work with RTM, Eow Jin was involved in a number of other external projects such as being a part-time songwriter with a local recording company Warnada, the music director and contributor of eight songs for two albums by Rafeah Buang in Singapore, and the co-producer of M. Nasir’s first recording in Singapore in 1979. From 1980 to 1985, some of Eow Jin’s compositions were recorded by Dhalan Zainuddin (“Lagu Untuk Mu”), Salamiah Hassan, Frances Yip, Jennifer Yen, Flora Santos, Rosemaria, Malek Ridzuan, Yunizar Hoessein, Alleycats and Rahimah Rahim.

Meanwhile, Eow Jin was approached and contracted by Sarimah Films to compose, arrange and produce film music scores, which he considered a personal achievement on his musical journey. He worked on two films with Sarimah Films—“Dia Ibu Ku” (1980) and “Rantau Sepanjang Jalan” (1983) with the latter winning Best Theme Music award for composition and arrangement for film score at the 4th Malaysia Film Festival in 1983. Later, he also composed and arranged the film music scores for “Ali Setan II” (1986) and “Hati Bukan Kristal” (1989).

He left RTM again in 1984 and ventured into music education. He joined Institut Teknologi MARA (ITM) as a music officer in the Cultural Unit and a lecturer in the Fine Arts Department. However, this appointment only lasted a year as Ahmad Merican, who was the programme manager of the newly established TV3, sought out Eow Jin, offering him the job as the station’s music supervisor/coordinator. Eow Jin realised that this was another opportunity that was too good to pass up, “it was as if the scope for the appointment was ‘tailor made’ for me!” he quipped.

He was with TV3 for 13 years (1986 to 1999), and he created theme scores and incidental music for all TV3 programmes except the news segment. He had to compose, arrange and produce music for more than 150 different programmes, ranging from an entertainment show and a sports magazine to a cookery series, scoring music for made-by-TV3 television drama series and creating station jingles.

“My know-how of Malay traditional and modern music, I owe to my 13 years with Orkestra RTM. That has proven invaluable for my work at TV3 as most of the programme themes have a Malay music slant,” he told Malay Mail.

Among some of his most memorable music themes composed for the station was the throbbing sound beat for TV3’s pop chart series “Muzik, Muzik”, the dramatic sounding promo for the Education Ministry and TV3’s Secondary School Drama Competition, cookery show “Kuali”, sports magazine “Dunia Sukan”, and music scores for TV3 dramas “Tuan Brown” and “Arus”. Besides his regular music-production-for-programmes routine, Eow Jin also handled TV3’s musical extravaganzas: “Juara Lagu” and the “ABU-Golden Kite World Song Festival” which included hiring and conducting the live bands, and supervising the sound recording for the shows.

After retiring from TV3, Eow Jin returned to teaching, lecturing at the International College of Music (ICOM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan (ASWARA).

After retiring from the day-to-day routine of broadcasting and lecturing, Eow Jin would still not call it a day. He returned to performing, playing for functions and tickling the ivories as the resident pianist of Carcosa Sri Negara (2003-2006), The Ritz Carlton Hotel (2006-2012) and The Majestic Hotel (2012-2015). The Majestic Hotel turned out incidentally to be his last regular gig; he was soon diagnosed to have Alzheimer’s disease.

Talent and Brilliance

Considering that Eow Jin was a self-taught musician (except for a British correspondence course he did when he joined RTM, with not even a certificate at the end of it), his musical achievements were nothing short of amazing. He won a number of awards and recorded a number of firsts in the country:

• First professional musician to be authorised by the Ministry of Education to teach music courses at degree level.

• First professional musician to teach at UPM and to be appointed adjunct professor.

• First professional musician to be awarded the Anugerah Seni Negara for musical arrangements by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage.

For a person who never really sought or thought of having a career in the music industry, Eow Jin had actually done it all: from being an active musician and bandleader, composer, arranger, record producer to leading an orchestra as well as being a music instructor and film music score writer.

In his later years, Eow Jin was bedridden and was cared for by his wife, Elaine Khaw Lean Kee, with the assistance of a caregiver. Tragically, they had earlier lost both their sons. Eow Jin passed away on 18 September 2024 at the age of 86 in KL.