Harumi Ohzora -- Harumi no Moonlight Serenade

Several days ago, I wrote an article about the Group Sounds band, The White Kicks（ザ・ホワイト・キックス）, which included a female member by the name of Taeko Morino（森野多恵子）. After their lone cover single of Lou Donaldson's "Alligator Bogaloo" in 1968, nothing more was really heard of them, but then a decade later, Morino changed her name to Tan Tan and went into a more soulful City Pop direction. I discovered one of the tracks from her 1978 album "Trying To Get To You", "Bring Me Your Broken Heart".

Well, a few more years later, Tan Tan made another name change, this time to Harumi Ohzora（大空はるみ）and in 1982, she released an album called "Harumi no Moonlight Serenade". Discovering this on YouTube was how I learned about the original Morino for the first time, and it was pretty fascinating since it's the singer's delving into a mix of jazz and technopop. At around the same time, I remember a fellow named Taco who had made a dent on the Billboard charts with his synth cover of "Puttin' On The Ritz". And this was years before the mixed genre of electro-jazz came to the fore.

According to the Tower Records description of the album, "Harumi no Moonlight Serenade" was produced by Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）with Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）providing some of that electronic equipment help and arrangement. The album seems to be set up as an old-fashioned radio program beginning with the congenial Ted Tuxedo providing the intros. Then, from 1:33, Ohzora does her version of Glenn Miller's titular tune with the orchestra sounding as if they consisted of a group of swing robots backing her angelic vocals. Future Past, indeed.

Except for the "Moonlight Serenade" cover, all of the other tracks are original creations but still within that techno-jazz milieu. "From The Moon Back to the Sun", with lyrics by Ohzora and music by Yu Imai（今井裕）, fulfills that feeling of cutting up a rug on that hotel ballroom floor.

The next track is "Lazy Girl". Written by Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）and composed by Kato, there is some tropicana with the jazz here. It's kinda reminiscent of Haruomi Hosono's（細野晴臣）work in the 1970s with a pinch of AOR. Then the following song at 14:09 is "Weekend" which was created by Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）as a dreamy work of sophisticated and relaxing jazz. Nice to lie down on the chaise lounge in that Long Island mansion while C-3PO brings over a refreshing glass of iced tea.

Y'know, I'm just curious to see if I can get a copy of "Harumi no Moonlight Serenade" since it is appealingly eccentric enough and definitely the songwriters on this project can't be beat. Unfortunately, according to The White Kicks' article on J-Wiki, it looks like that Ohzora passed away in 1998, but there were no other details.