Minor Tuning Band -- Soul Korekkiri desu ka（ソウルこれっきりですか）

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Rather fascinating sometimes when I look for one song and then the trail leads to another song when I least expect it. A nice story comes out of it which is part of what this blog is all about. I was listening to my Techno Kayo CD which I had purchased several months ago and was planning to write about (and I will after this article) the first track. Then on the J-Wiki article for this group, I found out that this group's origins were quite intriguing.

I did this for one other kayo in the past but I'm going to start off by referring once again to "Hooked on Classics", a 1981 album of disco-infused classical music that caught fire over the radio and at the stores.

Now this is where I get into the meat of this article. It seems that this whole process of adding a disco medley to another genre's famous compositions wasn't started by the folks behind "Hooked on Classics". Half a decade back, in fact, a band of Japanese studio musicians had decided to put together their own medley of kayo hits by applying the disco sound.

The group came up with the rather sad name of Minor Tuning Band（マイナー・チューニング・バンド）and called their potpourri "Soul Korekkiri desu ka". Not sure if it's really soul but I think it's more of a disco-and-funk thing. As for the title, it came from the famous line in Momoe Yamaguchi's classic "Yokosuka Story": korekkiri, korekkiri mou korekkiri desu ka, and sure enough the medley starts off with the disco version of the song.

Well, then, allow me to provide the list of the songs involved in "Soul Korekkiri desu ka":

Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）-- Yokosuka Story（横須賀ストーリー）
Sakiko Ito（伊藤咲子）-- Kimi Kawaii ne（きみ可愛いね）
Candies（キャンディーズ）-- Haru Ichiban（春一番）
Masamitsu Tayama（田山雅充）-- Haru Urara（春うらら）
Junko Sakurada（桜田淳子）-- Nee! Ki ga Tsuite yo（ねえ!気がついてよ）
back to Yokosuka Story
Yasuko Naito（内藤やす子）-- Omoide Boroboro（想い出ぼろぼろ）
Masato Shimon（子門真人）-- Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun（およげ！たいやきくん）
Daniel Boone -- Beautiful Sunday
Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）-- Momen no Handkerchief（木綿のハンカチーフ）
Kozue Saito（斎藤こず恵）-- Yamaguchi Sanchi no Tsutomu-kun（山口さんちのツトム君）
Teruhiko Aoi（あおい輝彦）-- Anata dake wo（あなただけを）
back to Yokosuka Story
Yuko Asano（浅野ゆう子）-- Sexy Bus Stop（セクシー・バス・ストップ）
back to Yokosuka Story
Harumi Miyako（都はるみ）-- Kita no Yado kara（北の宿から）

Perhaps even Minor Tuning Band hadn't expected it, but "Soul Korekkiri desu ka" became a hit soon after it was released in December 1976, peaking at No. 2 on Oricon.

Then came a slight dilemma. The powers-that-be wanted to get "Soul Korekkiri desu ka" performed on TV and perhaps the band kinda thought "Do we really have to go on TV?". Well, through an audition process within the NTV Music Academy cadre of students, three women were chosen to be the voices and faces for the song and the trio was dubbed Apache (although it was really the vocal group Singers Three who originally recorded the song). Problem solved.

And Apache was actually how I had wanted to start things off tonight. By the way, the following year, there was even an "Hooked on Enka" medley that became the talk of the town.