Zoo Nee Voo -- Hitori no Kanashimi（ひとりの悲しみ）

Over the past number of days, I've been enjoying that 50th anniversary collection of songs by composer emeritus Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, and as I mentioned in the article on the short-lived group Zariba（ザリバ）, I've encountered a few surprises from listening to CD 1 especially. The one surprise was that the aforementioned Zariba had a teenage Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）as the vocalist with a voice much more different than the one that I've been used to for so long.

Well, another surprise from the CD was on discovering that the kayo classic "Mata Au Hi Made"（また逢う日まで）by the late Kiyohiko Ozaki（尾崎紀世彦）wasn't the original incarnation. When I was looking through the J-Wiki article for the song, I had somehow overlooked a rather important piece of information.

Now, in the original article for "Mata Au Hi Made" on the blog, I let readers know that the song had first been created by Tsutsumi and lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）as a possible jingle for a Sanyo air conditioner commercial back in 1969 but after a number of tweaks and even a performance by singer Michiru Maki（槇みちる）, Sanyo basically said "No thanks". After that, I had assumed that it would eventually land in Ozaki's hands.

Ah, however, what actually happened was that before Ozaki, the song was given over to the Group Sounds band, Zoo Nee Voo（ズー・ニー・ヴー）, as its 4th single under the title of "Hitori no Kanashimi" (One's Loneliness). Released in February 1970, the song is virtually the same in terms of melody with that cheerful blast of horns and drums at the beginning but the lyrics are different. But alas, the song didn't become a hit. Still, once Ozaki tackled it under its new and final title of "Mata Au Hi Made" over a year later, the song would enter kayo history.

As for the unusually named Zoo Nee Voo (I couldn't find out how that name came about), their time ranged from 1968 to 1971, and despite a few lineup changes, it seems that the membership at any one time was 6 people led by Yoshito Machida（町田義人）. Their big hit came with their 2nd single in 1969, "Shiroi Sangoshou"（白いサンゴ礁...White Coral Reef）, so I will have to find out about that one pretty soon.

For a few days, I had been scratching my head, thinking that I had actually covered Zoo Nee Voo before so I was quite mystified to see that there was no such band in the Labels. I had assumed that I talked about them in association with a song by folk group Alice（アリス）, but it turned out that the band there was actually another group with a similarly odd name, Woody Woo（ウッディ・ウー）.