The Jaguars -- Kimi ni Aitai（君に会いたい）

Well, in the Group Sounds age, we've had The Spiders, The Tigers and even a band called Ox, so why not a GS sextet called The Jaguars（ザ・ジャガーズ）?

The Jaguars had their genesis from a proto-band created within a teenager entertainment collective called the Roppongi Yajuu Kai（六本木野獣会...Roppongi Beast Association）in 1963, known as the Yajuu Kai All-Stars. Then, the following year, the band became Yukio Miya and The Play Five（宮ユキオとザ・プレイ・ファイブ）with Miya as the drummer and leader. But with their debut at Philips Records in 1967, the group was finally established as The Jaguars with Miya, lead vocalist Shin Okamoto（岡本信）, bassist Mikio Morita（森田巳木夫）, guitarists Koichi Miyazaki（宮崎こういち）& Hisayuki Okitsu（沖津ひさゆき）, and organist Yasuharu Sato（佐藤安治）. The lineup would change a few times over the next few years.

Their debut single was "Kimi ni Aitai" from June 1967. Although I can translate that as "I Want To See You", the official English-language title was apparently "Want You See Again" after the one main line in the lyrics by Masakazu/Shoichi Kiyokawa（清川正一）, who was also responsible for the music.

The subtitles for this later performance of "Kimi ni Aitai" has that main line being transcribed as "Won't You See Again", but I guess I'll stick with the original although seeing that somewhat mangled English title gives me a bit of the crawlies. No problems with the music, though. Although I was not out of diapers at the time of the song, there is still plenty of nostalgic goodness to be had here.

During the original Group Sounds era up to 1971, The Jaguars put out 8 singles and 3 albums with their reign officially from 1964 to 1971. Another single came out in 1982 when the group decided to get back together, and then this period lasted all the way to 2009 when unfortunately vocalist Okamoto passed away that year at the age of 59 on the eve of his birthday.