Maki Asakawa -- Machi no Sakaba de（町の酒場で）

Friday nights are usually the celebratory time of the week with the corporate cogs getting out to the nearest beloved izakaya for some snacks and drinks and blowing off some steam.

Then, what would be a night like a Monday be like in Tokyo? Well, if folks aren't headed straight home for dinner, perhaps they may be hitting the bars as well, but I don't think that it would necessarily be all that hale and hearty. Perhaps the trip for some libation may be down to a solo act or a duet and the mood may be more of a commiserating one as another arduous work week begins.

That was the mood I got when I discovered this song by the late singer-songwriter Maki Asakawa（浅川マキ）for the first time earlier today. Her song-in-trade is in the jazz and blues genres according to J-Wiki, and for her 5th album, "Uramado ~ MAKI V"（裏窓...Rear Window）released in November 1973, she supplied "Machi no Sakaba de" (In A Town Watering Hole), very much a bluesy and beautiful number about ending up as a lonely person drinking one's sorrows away.

Indeed, the blues atmosphere is obvious but I can also pick up hints of country and kayo in "Machi no Sakaba de", and Asakawa's vocals possess that seen-it-all, done-it-all quality but they also still have a certain bell clarity as if the booze and cigarettes haven't quite deposited all that much rasp quite yet. There's a wonderful sax solo in there and the arrangement seems to be ideal for performing in that lonely bar somewhere deep downtown.

"Uramado" peaked at No. 72 on Oricon. Asakawa provided more than a couple of dozen albums up to 1998 along with a dozen singles. She hailed from Ishikawa Prefecture and according to Wikipedia, she based her style on singers such as Mahalia Jackson and Billie Holiday. Asakawa even collaborated with a wide range of artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, Tokiko Kato（加藤登紀子）and Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）. She was due to perform a final set of a 3-night gig in Nagoya back in January 2010 when she passed away from heart failure at the age of 67.