Mizue Takada/Southern All Stars/Juicy Fruits/The Ventures -- Sonna Hiroshi ni Damasarete （そんなヒロシに騙されて）

Wow! It's been almost 18 months since I've put up something by Mizue Takada（高田みづえ）. It might seem that it's all ado about nothing, but when Takada is one of the singers that helped me wade into the ocean that is kayo kyoku in the first place in the early 80s...well, I just had to rectify that.

So, allow me to put up her 21st single from August 1983, "Sonna Hiroshi ni Damasarete" (Tricked by That Hiroshi). If I'm not mistaken, it was responsible for getting Takada invited one last time to the Kohaku Utagassen which was where I first got to hear it. Written and composed by Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）of Southern All Stars, there was a definite love thing going on for the Group Sounds of the 60s when he created this rollicking tune about a woman absolutely in thrall to the roguish dance floor-loving Hiroshi despite his wayward personality.

For Takada, this was the 3rd-most successful single of her career behind the Latin spice of "Watashi wa Piano"（私はピアノ...I am A Piano） and her debut release of "Glass Zaka"（硝子坂...Glass Slope）, of which the former was also penned by Kuwata back in 1980. It went all the way up to No. 6 on Oricon and sold over 300,000 records. It also became the 45th-ranked single for 1983.

What I hadn't known at the time was that Takada's single was a cover version for the Southern All Stars original which was a track on the band's 6th album, "Kirei"（綺麗...Pure）. The album came out just a month before Mizue's version and hit the No. 1 spot, later becoming the No. 5 album of the year. Keyboardist Yuko Hara（原由子）took care of the vocals here, and both she and Takada interpret the song as a bit of a handwringer about the woman's love for Hiroshi although it sounds like he's already thrown her away like an empty can on the side of the road.

On the same day that Takada's "Sonna Hiroshi ni Damasarete" was released, another band that tapped into the music of the 50s and 60s, Juicy Fruits, also released their own version of the song as their 11th single. It peaked at No. 44.

And finally, I discovered that The Ventures also had their own instrumental version of the song.