Rumi Koyama -- Sasurai no Guitar（さすらいのギター）

Currently, a couple of my good friends are having their vacation in Japan, but before they left, I was able to have lunch last Friday with the husband half. Over my medium-rare steak, he rather surprised me when he told me that he had downloaded some of the 1960s kayo since up until now, I knew him as being more of a contemporary music fellow. But as you know, I'm always welcoming of folks discovering some of the old stuff.

Perhaps one of the songs in his download was this one by singer/tarento/actress Rumi Koyama（小山ルミ）. "Sasurai no Guitar" (Wandering Guitar) was her 6th single from June 1971, and yep, although I did mention that my friend had downloaded 1960s kayo, I kinda think that this snazzy number retained some of that go-go feeling from the decade before. Koyama no longer sings but I think that she had a pretty strong voice to accompany "Sasurai no Guitar" which also seemed to possess a layer of French pop with its "Yeah, Yeah" melody by J.A.Schatrow. Kazuya Senke（千家和也）, who would also later provide some hits for Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, took care of the lyrics of a woman falling in love.

Koyama herself was born in Sapporo to a Japanese mother and a father who was an Irish soldier. Beginning a career in modeling while she was in junior high school, she soon got into acting in the late 1960s with her singing beginning with "Hajimete no Date"（はじめてのデート...First Date）in 1968. With her final single coming out in 1974, she moved to the United States and met a Japanese jeweler whom she married after which she retired from show business. According to J-Wiki, she's currently living in Los Angeles.