The Tigers -- Smile For Me

Commenter Yuie-chan was generous enough to leave a comment for Kenji Sawada's（沢田研二）energetic "TOKIO" in which she gave me a tip about a song that was recorded during Sawada's time with his old Group Sounds band, The Tigers（ザ・タイガース）. And I was to discover that this particular number came with quite a history.

Now, cross-pollination between Japanese and American music artists has been in existence for decades with one of the more prominent examples being the legendary surf rock band The Ventures coming up with hit songs for folks like Feifei Ouyang（欧陽菲菲）and Yuko Nagisa（渚ゆう子）. I heard that they even recorded an American TV theme song that picked up some notice.

Well, although they didn't churn out kayo here like The Ventures, The Bee Gees...or specifically Barry and Maurice Gibb...did contribute a song for Julie and company. According to the J-Wiki article for the song, The Tigers and The Bee Gees somehow were on opposite sides of an international telephone call and the two parties hit it off very well, culminating in the latter giving the unreleased "Smile For Me" by the Gibbs to the former as a present of sorts.

Yuie-chan mentioned how good Sawada's English was in this one. I was even more impressed on hearing the gentle "Smile For Me" that the producer Biddu actually had to guide the singer and the band through the lyrics phonetically. Sawada does sound good here. The single was released in July 1969 and peaked at No. 3 on Oricon.

The Wikipedia article for "Smile For Me" also provided the tip that the very rough 1968 demo version of the song actually got onto YouTube several years back. It features one of the Gibb brothers singing on guitar (unfortunately it's been taken down).

If the title "Smile For Me" sounds familiar to you for other reasons, I think you might want to check this link.