We're going way back to her 2nd single from February 1975 when she was a 17-year-old teenager. This would be "Shiawase no Toki" (Happy Times), and even with this early ballad, it was evident that the Nagoya native had talent in her singing and songwriting. With arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, "Shiawase no Toki" is an aural version of a shojo manga containing pure innocent love between a boy and a girl, as Yagami sings like an angel from the heavens providing musical support for the couple.
According to her J-Wiki bio, at the same time that she was attending Aichi Shukutoku High School, Yagami was also going to a vocal talent school run by Yamaha. During that time, she entered the 8th Yamaha Popular Song Contest (PopCon) in October 1974 for which she was nominated for both "Shiawase no Toki" and what would become her debut single "Ame no Hi no Hitorigoto"（雨の日のひとりごと）. Both won prizes at PopCon, and for two songs to be entered and win in the same contest had never occurred and hasn't been repeated since. It's quite the feat that would herald a most amazing career.
I recently learned that a cover version of this exists (a.k.a. “Il tempo di felicità”) by Italian singer Gilda Giuliani. And now I MUST HEAR IT! Gilda is best known in Japan for her award-winning, much-covered 1973 tune “Parigi a volte cosa fa.”
ReplyDeleteIt got me to wondering, have any other Westerners covered Junko’s work? The answer is a resounding YES! Paul Mauriat got his orchestra to do a tune called “Blue Raindrop,” which is just an instrumental version of “Mizuiro no ame.” It attempts recreate the magic with Junko’s hit that Vicky Leandros’ “L’amour est bleu” did a decade before, but it was not to be.
There’s also apparently a cover of “Polar Star” from Kiwi singing duo Kim Hart and Steve Allen, on the B-side of their “Out of Control” single. (Note: this Steve Allen is not the US TV personality)
Hello, Mike, and thanks for your comments. I just heard a bit of Gilda via YouTube, and I think that she has the voice to match some of those soaring passages that Junko has in her songs.
DeleteOver the years, there have been some cover albums of famous Japanese artists such as Kazumasa Oda and Every Little Thing featuring people like Bobby Caldwell and Christopher Cross. There was even some attention paid to a vocal trio around 1990 called ASAP who covered the works of Yumi Matsutoya.