Ayumi Ishida & Tin Pan Alley Family -- Hitori Tabi（ひとり旅）

 

A few days ago, I mentioned the passing of veteran actress and singer Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）. She was definitely one representative of the kayo kyoku era, but I was later surprised by the fact that even she had her dalliance with the emerging wave of City Pop in the late 1970s. Through leafing through my first issue of Yutaka Kimura's "Japanese City Pop", I discovered that she was involved in a collaborative project with the band Tin Pan Alley which resulted in the April 1977 album "Our Connection"（アワー・コネクション）.

It was back in 2018 on KKP when I wrote on the first track of that album which was also her first single under the name Ayumi Ishida & Tin Pan Alley Family, "Watashi Jishin"（私自身）. For some reason, "Watashi Jishin" doesn't show up anywhere on Ishida's discography in her J-Wiki profile but from the thumbnail above, the B-side is also the second track on "Our Connection", "Hitori Tabi" (Traveling Solo).

As with "Watashi Jishin", "Hitori Tabi" was made by lyricist Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）and composer Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, and just from the title itself, I could make out that this was a post-breakup tune as the protagonist heads out alone to the more rural areas by train in late winter or early spring to forget about a now-dead romance. The uncanny thing about "Hitori Tabi" is how the intro at least sounds a lot like the one for Steely Dan's "Black Cow" although their legendary album "Aja" didn't actually get released until September 1977. Things that make me go Hmmmm. But in any case, despite Hashimoto's lyrics, Ishida's delivery sounds footloose and fancy-free, and Hosono's melody is filled with slow funky licks and still-romantic strings shimmering in the wind. It would seem that the lady on the train isn't lamenting a broken silk rope but is celebrating fallen shackles.