Izumi Yukimura -- Yume no Mambo（夢のマンボ）

Tonight's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）was more of an improvement over last week's episode which didn't quite mesh for me. However, I did feel that time was indeed flying by when I saw Toshi of X Japan perform a duet with a member of STU48 via Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）famous "Akai Sweet Pea"（赤いスイートピー）. Yup, things must be mellowing out.

Also, I got to see enka singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）, I believe, perform Izumi Yukimura's（雪村いづみ）debut song "Omoide no Waltz"（想い出のワルツ）. Now, checking the archives, I found out that I'd already written about that tune but still wanting to see what else was out there for Yukimura, I came across that movie of fun in the sun, "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘...So Young, So Bright）from 1955, which starred the San-nin Musume（三人娘）of Yukimura, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）. I've never seen the film myself but scrolling through the J-Wiki article, I realized that "Janken Musume" was also an opportunity for each of the singers to show off their vocal talents, so I guess that it was also a musical as well.

I'd been looking for a Yukimura song that wasn't actually a cover of an American pop tune from the same time period, and I was fortunate enough to find one in this movie called "Yume no Mambo" (Dream Mambo). Written by Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）and composed by Hachiro Matsui（松井八郎）, it's an appropriately spicy number with the singer flying through the lyrics like a really swift skylark. I would love to see if a video might pop up someday showing Yukimura actually performing this on stage somewhere.