Pedro & Capricious/Masanori Sera -- Wakare no Asa (別れの朝）

A few nights ago, I came across a YouTube video of Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子） performing this lovely ballad at a concert:

I'd never heard this song before, so I was wondering if this had been a relatively new tune by Takahashi, but it sounded somewhat old-fashioned. And in fact, it was. This was actually "Wakare no Asa"(Morning of Parting), the debut single by the Latin/jazz band Pedro & Capricious, released all the way back in October 1971. As I've mentioned in previous articles on the band and Mariko Takahashi herself, Takahashi had been a member of the band for several years in the 1970s.

Takahashi wouldn't join Pedro & Capricious until 1973, so the very first rendering of this song was with original vocal, Yoko Maeno（前野曜子）. As with Takahashi, Maeno gave a heartrending performance of Rei Nakanishi's（なかにし礼） lyrics which speak of a couple trying to smile through the tears as they spend their last moments with each other. The song also hit a chord with the music-listening public as it hit the top spot on Oricon and became the 8th-ranked song of 1972, selling over 500,000 records. It became Pedro & Capricious' biggest hit of their career which is a revelation for me, since I was also listening for decades to some of their later folkier hits (that have also become permanently attached to Takahashi) such as "Go-ban-gai no Mari e"（五番街のマリへ） and "Johnny e no Dengon"（ジョニーへの伝言...A Message For Johnny）.

This is Takahashi's version of the song when she was with the group.

I've heard about Masanori Sera （世良公則） for years but hadn't really heard his music since I was never all that much of a rock fan. However, I have seen him as an actor on a number of dramas such as last Fall's NHK morning serial "Ume-chan Sensei" as a somewhat unorthodox but kind doctor. Still, I think he's a rocker at heart and in 1994, he released his own rock ballad version of "Wakare no Asa" accompanied by some blistering guitar.

However, all these different Japanese versions all come from a non-Japanese source. In 1967, singer-songwriter Udo Jurgens released "Was ich dir sagen will"(What I Want To Tell You). And a year later, this was also made into a Matt Monro (famous for his rendition of "From Russia With Love", the theme of the 2nd James Bond movie of the same name) song under the title of "The Music Played".

No matter the title and the language, though, it's still a wonderful song to listen to.

Pedro & Capricious -- BEST