Lovely name for a jazz singer...Candy Asada（キャンディー浅田）, although I have yet to find out her real name. There's just a very short bio for her on J-Wiki in which I found out that she had attended Kansai Gaidai College in Osaka before entering showbiz. She became a part of the NHK music show "Stage 101" in the early 1970s after which she became involved with other programs on TV and radio.
As a jazz chanteuse, she released a debut album in 1982 called "Welcome Back...to you" and the title track "Welcome Back" launches things off. A sprightly and nimble song which brings back memories of The Manhattan Transfer and Japanese vocal pop groups such as Circus（サーカス）and Hi-Fi Set（ハイファイセット）, I also think Asada sounds a bit like Yukari Ito（伊東ゆかり）who has probably also done her fair share of jazz. Lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and saxophonist & composer Eiji Kitahara（北原英司）created the welcoming "Welcome Back". With that one synthesizer in there, I couldn't help but also include the Techno label to describe the song, so I'm also reminded of Harumi Ohzora（大空はるみ）.
The album in general has got some good star power backing Asada up. Minoru Mukaiya（向谷実）of Casiopea was on keyboards along with at least a couple of Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）backing players, drummer Jun Aoyama（青山純）and bassist Koki Ito（伊藤広規）. Plus, there is always Jake H. Concepcion on sax as well as Time Five as the chorus.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.