I first mentioned about the legendary saxophonist Sadao Watanabe（渡辺貞夫）in the blog as one of the songwriters for one of the songs covered by AOR duo The Milky Way in their lone album "Summertime Love Song". However, tonight I'm happy to say that I finally get to write about him in his element of putting forth those sweet sweet honeyed tones in this article. My first time finding about him was through one of those really glossy photo magazines published in Japan in the early 1980s. Sorry to say that I wasn't able to retain that issue but I got the impression that the Tochigi Prefecture-born Watanabe was having a great life traveling throughout the world with his music.
And it's really quite nice music to my ears. I love the whole arrangement on his "Good News", a track from his 1985 album "Maisha"（マイシャ）. Produced in Los Angeles, "Good News" by itself wonderfully swirls together all that I've loved about the AOR instrumental genre all these years. Watanabe and his sax, all those horns, the keyboards, the bass and the scatting bring back all sorts of radio nostalgia even though I only heard the track for the first time a few months ago. Will have to sample more of his stuff from the different decades that he has played.
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