Chikara Ueda & The Power Station -- Twilight Shadows

Approximately a couple of years ago, a fellow sent me a message via the Contact Form about a song that he had heard but couldn't glean the artist or the song title. I sent out an All-Points Bulletin in May 2018 on whether anyone else was able to recognize this tune that I had thought from the vocals was something by Hitomi Tohyama（当山ひとみ）. Now, though I didn't get any nibbles and I couldn't figure out who this was, the fellow did contact me again very recently to say that he finally was able to track down title and artist thankfully.

Indeed, the above is the song of note and this is "Twilight Shadows", a track from the 1981 album "Sunlight Whisper" by Chikara Ueda & The Power Station（上田力＆パワーステーション）. It kinda straddles that line between City Pop and a strut-friendly funk from the United States, and the vocals according to a few sources such as CD Japan belong to a group called Suzie & Jada（スージー&JADA）. For a funky evening number, "Twilight Shadows" sounds pretty good for a morning walk along the dewy grass.

As for Ueda, according to his J-Wiki bio, he wore a number of hats in the music industry: pianist, composer, arranger, music critic and producer. His career started in the early 1960s but his peak seemed to have come when he rode the wave of fusion which was hitting Japan in the late 1970s. He worked with a variety of studio musicians, forming different groups such as Chikara Ueda & Caravan, The New Herd and, of course, The Power Station with whom he created 5 albums including "Sunlight Whisper".

Ueda passed away in October 2017 at the age of 91.