Osamu Komatsu & His Dark Fellows -- Kosame no Amour（小雨のアムール）

Writing my fourth and final article tonight, with the first two being City Pop in nature, I decided to finish up with a song from the older urban genre, Mood Kayo.

Encountered this video purely by happenstance but it does fit the bill when it comes to Latin-enhanced Mood Kayo. I had never heard of this group before but Osamu Komatsu & His Dark Fellows（小松おさむとダーク・フェローズ）give this somewhat tender and mournful ballad called "Kosame no Amour" (Amour in a Rain Shower) from June 1968. As with a number of other examples of Mood Kayo I've heard over the years, "Kosame no Amour" is something to be savored while sitting at a table in an old-fashioned supper club in Ginza while the band is playing up front.

There's very little information about the group except that they debuted in 1967 with "Shounai Blues"（庄内ブルース）. As for "Kosame no Amour", it was composed by Masao Yoneyama（米山正夫）and written by Yukiko Marimura（万里村ゆき子）who also provided the lyrics to the more famous "Sumire Iro no Namida"（すみれ色の涙）as originally performed by Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets in the same year.