Akira Nishikino -- Begin the Beguine（ビギン・ザ・ビギン）

 

"Begin the Beguine" is the old standard that was concocted by the legendary songwriter Cole Porter back in 1935, and its various iterations have been with me since I was literally a baby. For one thing, the sultry nightclub-friendly Ann Margret cover with a touch of bossa nova in its jazz (although a beguine is a form of slow rhumba) was on that RCA Victor "50 Years Of Hits In Stereo" set that my parents had gotten along with the stereo.

Since then, I've also gotten familiar with Julio Iglesias' 1981 take on "Begin the Beguine" which was arranged in the disco fashion although disco was pretty much dead (or hibernating) by that point, I gather. The song even made its way onto NHK's 1983 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen when both Red and White teams got together for their usual kick-out-the-doors musical tribute. Porter would have loved it. Too bad that it hasn't gotten onto YouTube.

Entertainer Akira Nishikino（錦野旦）, who I've known primarily for his 1971 hit "Sora ni Taiyo ga Aru Kagiri" （空に太陽がある限り）, followed Iglesias' Latin disco style and recorded his own Japanese-language take on "Begin the Beguine". This was Nishikino's 27th single from June 1982 with Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）providing the Japanese lyrics and the great Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久） arranging everything pretty closely to the Iglesias version.