Chu Kosaka/Happy End -- Fuuraibou（風来坊）

A couple of days ago, Jerry from Come Along Radio let me know that Spotify had a copy of singer-songwriter Chu Kosaka's（小坂忠）"Chew Kosaka Sings" (and yup, apparently that is how the name is spelled in the title) from 1976. I don't have much information on that album as of yet, but the message from my friend sparked me to take another look at one of the pioneers in the New Music age of kayo kyoku during the 1970s.

Through YouTube, I was able to find this one called "Fuuraibou" from Kosaka's January 1975 album "Horo"（ほうろう）. Unlike the kanji that I put up in the title line above which was the original writing of the song in an album by the band Happy End（はっぴいえんど）, officially on this album, it's been put in as 「ふうらい坊」. In either case, the meaning is "wanderer" or "vagabond".

With such a word that has been used in a number of enka and perhaps even folk tunes, I had been expecting Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, who had written and composed "Fuuraibo" (and who had worked with Kosaka earlier in the late 1960s in the band Apryl Fool), to concoct some tale of a lone wolf wandering the highways and byways with no particular destination in mind but trying to get away from some place or situation. Instead, most of the song merely consists of the title itself and a lot of "la, la, la". And yet, Kosaka's cover of "Fuuraibo" has some cool funk added to the surprisingly delectable sing-song delivery of the lyrics. From what I read in "Japanese City Pop", Kosaka has some big guns backing him up including Hosono's Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）and a chorus including Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）, Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）(the latter two being part of Sugar Babe). I could pick up on Yoshida's voice immediately.

As I mentioned earlier, "Fuuraibou" with the completely kanji title was originally performed by Happy End in their third album from February 1973, "HAPPY END". Hosono is also the vocalist here and this original version here is more laid-back and stately with a trumpet added. The sing-song nature of the song is there as well and I found myself swaying myself as I mouthed the title. The relentless repetition of the title and the melody makes it sound almost like a children's song.

I've listened to the song several times since last night and there was something that reminded me of another old song...actually a couple of old songs. The first song that it reminded me of was a Disney tune, "Who's Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?", and crazily enough, when I checked the J-Wiki article for "HAPPY END", it turns out that Hosono did base it on the song that he had heard in "The Three Little Pigs" and the whole lyrical structure was created from what he thought he had heard from "Who's Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf?" when he was just a kid. This information originally came from the liner notes for the album, by the way.

As for the other song, well, in both the Happy End original and Kosaka cover, there is that keyboard tootle followed by some gently sweeping introspection which reminded me of Cat Stevens' "Wild World" from 1970. I like both versions but with the original, I envisage a quiet Sunday afternoon in some cabin while with Kosaka, it's more of a nice brisk walk through the city on that same afternoon, although I'm still not sure whether I would say that "Fuuraibou" is a City Pop song.