After observing one third of the Gosanke (御三家), I've come to notice that the final addition to this trio seems to have this strange habit of raising a thick eyebrow while singing. This would be slightly more obvious when he sings songs that have this Latin/Spanish flare to it. Yes, I'm talking about Teruhiko Saigo (西郷輝彦), and one such song would be his most notable hit from 1966 'Hoshi no Flamenco'.
With the blare of the trumpet and the rolling drums at the start, it sounds like it is setting the stage for a dance-off (flamenco, of course) between the flamboyant singer and his rival... huh, that makes for pretty good 60's movie material, just got to add in the female lead to be the dame the two are fighting (dancing) for. Anyway, then we have Saigo himself turning to the side and clapping his hands to the castanets, singing the song in his gentle and mellow voice with a slight cheeky smirk on his face. Oh yeah, add that part to the mentioned movie idea! Hah, now that's what I call smooth! Then the girl would definitely throw herself at him!
Since he did quite a bit of acting back in the day, 'Hoshi no flamenco' was the theme song for one of Saigo's earlier movies from 1966 with a similar name 'Harukanaru no bojo hoshi no flamenco' (遥かなる慕情～星のフラメンコ) staring the singer himself. Come to think of it, the 60's had dozens of films featuring these singer-actors and a particular song of theirs.
Written and composed by Kuranosuke Hamaguchi (浜口庫之助), I can't give the exact figures in terms of the song's sales since there was no write-up whatsoever on the it, but I'm quite sure it did well as he's always singing it in later days. He also sang 'Hoshi no Flamenco' twice on the Kohaku during his 3rd and 10th appearance. Link below is to a recent performance to the song, by the way.
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| He looked like he had a uni-brow... |
That is one intimidating unibrow there. He could have killed a man with it. Kayo kyoku seems to have had quite the love affair with those Latin trumpets. They were everywhere including theme songs for samurai dramas.
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