Minami Yasuda -- Theme from "Ironside"/Oh My Lidia

Oh, my brother and I always got a kick out of the opening for the venerable detective series "Ironside" (1967). Of course, it wasn't because poor Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside got shot and ended up paralyzed. Instead, we enjoyed the "WHEE, WOO, WHEE, WOO" of the opening theme before the orchestra came blazing in. According to Wikipedia, the song was the first theme to use a synthesizer, and I would later find out that it was all created by the master Quincy Jones.

Now, I knew that early in Japanese TV's history, there was a tradition of importing a lot of the American TV series to be either dubbed or subtitled, and since the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese-language cover versions of popular US and UK tunes were recorded and sold. The tradition was also extended for at least one movie, "The Godfather" for which the late Kiyohiko Ozaki（尾崎紀世彦）was provided lyrics to sing the famous theme.

Although I don't have any extensive knowledge on the subject, I think that when some of these old shows such as "Ironside" were brought over, there was a trend for the Japanese side to take that original theme song and then have Japanese lyrics added for recording by the appropriate singer. I remember that was indeed the case for the first-season progressive rock theme song for the Gerry Andersen sci-fi series "Space: 1999". Guess what? That was also the case for the theme for "Ironside".

With some rearrangement by composer Yasuo Higuchi/安田南 (unfortunately taking out the "WHEE, WOO, WHEE, WOO", but putting in some other synthesizer spookiness) and lyrics by Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）, "Oni Keibu Ironside"（鬼警部アイアンサイド）was released as the debut single in 1973 of jazz chanteuse Minami Yasuda（安田南）. As Yasuda gives her haunting rendition of how tough life in the city is, Higuchi gives his slightly shorter but still funky tribute to the original Jones theme.

Well, I'm coming back to finish this article after my 2-hour lesson, and I ended up whistling the "WHEE, WOO, WHEE, WOO" during break time. That's how much of an earworm "Ironside" has been.

As for Ms. Yasuda, she was born and raised in Sapporo and started her singing career sometime in the early 1960s with her style having been described as being very distinct and free-spirited which gained her a lot of popularity in the 1970s. And her four albums and two singles were all from that decade. I did find a track from her 3rd album "Some Feeling" from 1977 which had Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）on piano and Kenji Omura（大村憲司）on guitar along with the rest of the band. Both of them have entries on the blog as well. Titled "Oh My Lidia", The singer and composer Yukihide Takekawa（タケカワユキヒデ） created the song and the track sounds more soulful than jazzy. Yasuda has that delivery which made me think of a mix of chanson and Rickie Lee Jones scatting.

According to her J-Wiki bio, she had already retired by the 1990s although "Some Feeling" finally got a CD release in 2004. Apparently in a couple of interviews in the past decade, it was found out that Yasuda had already passed away some time before 2009 although any other information has not been forthcoming.

September 9 2019: Daemonskald has once again come to the rescue with some added information about the origins of "Oh My Lidia" that you can see below in the comments.