Ken Shimura -- Shimura Ken no Zen'in Shuugo Higashimurayama Ondo （志村けんの全員集合 東村山音頭）

Yup, today is indeed the day of the total solar eclipse and as I am writing this, it is proceeding to get darker although here in Toronto, we will only be getting just 70% of totality. To be honest, I'm not all that enthused about something that I have seen on TV often enough and if I did see directly, I would go blind. But, I still thought I needed to get that out of the way.

In the past several months, I've written about the deaths of a few kayo songwriters but this time, I will be paying tribute to someone from Old Hollywood. Jerry Lewis passed away yesterday morning at the ripe old age of 91. Back when the United States had plenty of comedy duos on stage and in the movies, I was born early enough to remember folks like Hope & Crosby, Abbott & Costello, Meara & Stiller, etc.

Then, there was Martin & Lewis. I saw Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as the younger version of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Hope and Lewis were the doltish halves of their respective teams but while the former was known for his glib tongue, Jerry Lewis was Jim Carrey before Jim Carrey. He was all about the physical funny: gangly extremities and rubber face. My brother and I always threatened to laugh up our insides like sea cucumbers watching Jerry. In fact, the above video is a scene from "Money From Home" (1957) which is the one scene that defined the comedian for me.

Now, the one fellow in Japan who still reminds me of the crazy antics of Lewis is Ken Shimura（志村けん）of the comedy troupe The Drifters（ザ・ドリフターズ）. He was the one guy that we always looked forward to seeing on their long-running TV show "Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo"（8時だョ!全員集合...It's 8 o'clock! Everyone Assemble） because he would always pull off the funny face or do something outrageous...often to the point where the TBS switchboard would light up like a Christmas tree due to parents calling in to complain.

Shimura has been around forever now and I think he's greatly toned down his stuff due to age but today I found a song that he covered back in the heyday of "Hachi-ji da yo!". With the elongated title of "Shimura Ken no Zen'in Shuugo Higashimurayama Ondo" (Ken Shimura's "Everyone Assemble" Higashimurayama Ondo) , this was his cover of "Higashimurayama Ondo", a traditional march that was first created by Chuuji Tsuchiya（土屋忠司）and Junichi Hosokawa（細川潤一）for the city of Higashimurayama in Metropolitan Tokyo back in 1963.

The comical version by Shimura was divided into three different parts called "-chome" with the 4th chome (done first) being the most similar to the original song in style but then going down into the 3rd chome and 1st chome (no idea why there is no 2nd chome), things get progressively wackier. The 3rd chome was actually whipped up by Drifters leader, the late Chosuke Ikariya（いかりや長介）, and the 1st chome done by Shimura himself. The song was the B-side to the single "Kato Cha no Hajimete no Boku desu"（加藤茶のはじめての僕デス...Cha Kato's First Me） which was released in September 1976.

To give credit where credit is due, though, here is the original version. A number of singers have covered it over the years. J-Wiki has mentioned veteran singer Michiya Mihashi（三橋美智也）and minyo singer Fumiko Shitaya（下谷二三子）, and here they are performing "Higashimurayama Ondo" together.

And to wrap it all up, at Higashimurayama Station, a brief snippet of the song is used to signal the train's impending departure.