Sandy O'Neil/Keiko Utoku & Fusanosuke Kondo/B.B. Queens -- Good-by morning（グッバイ・モーニング）

Earlier this afternoon, NHK's "Gogo Uta"（ごごウタ）was on and one of the guests happened to be a Chinese-born singer, Enrei（媛麗）, who gave this performance of a ballad titled "Good-by morning". Usually the program features a lot of enka and Mood Kayo, but this particular number was more on the pops side, and the way that Enrei sang it reminded me of some of the songs by 80s singer Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）.

Thinking that it was a new song (and obviously not reading the songwriter information that usually pops up at the bottom of the screen), I decided to look it up on YouTube and J-Wiki. Although I couldn't find out anything about Enrei, I did discover that the singer was actually doing a cover whose origins were in the 1970s.

1976, to be exact. I saw the video that you see above and saw the singer's name as Sandy. But looking at the woman on the cover, I thought it could have been Sandii as in Sandii & The Sunsetz, a band that I had always identified as a New Wave group, certainly from the song that I had written about, "Battery" from 1986.

Indeed that Sandii and the Sandy for this song were one and the same (real name being Aya Suzuki/鈴木あや). Starting her career in show business as a pin-up girl in the early 1970s, she also released a few singles under the name Sandi Ai（サンディー・アイ）and then Sandy O'Neil. Included in those was "Good-by morning" which earned her a top prize in singing at the 7th World Popular Song Festival in 1976.

With lyrics by singer-songwriter Mayo Shouno（庄野真代）and music by Kaoru Nakajima（なかじまかおる・中島薫）, the original "Good-by morning" has that plaintive tone as a man tries to fix things with his love although it's not at all certain whether he will be successful. However, he's going to do his darnedest while the meaning of that title hangs over his head. The melody, though, sounds pretty hopeful with a hint of blues in there.

I don't know how "Good-by morning" did back then, but apparently it has been covered by a variety of artists over the years. One example was in November 1992 when blues singer Fusanosuke Kondo（近藤房之助）and Keiko Utoku（宇徳敬子）from the trio Mi-Ke did a duet version of the song with the title written in English. I like this version even better since it has quite a bit more blues feeling and it reminds me of an Eagles ballad. The single peaked at No. 19 on Oricon and is available as a track on Utoku's BEST album, "THE BEST 'eternity'" from December 2003.

Now with both Kondo and Utoku having collaborated as part of B.B. Queens (Mi-Ke was the backing chorus trio for the group), that group decided to go for its own version in 2011 as a track in the 25th anniversary edition single of their most famous song "Odoru Ponpokorin"（おどるポンポコリン）. This take definitely has more of a 50s doo-wop style.

Incredible how curiosity into a song on a kayo show can reveal a whole lot about its history.