Hard to believe but we've reached December 2020 and I think that there are probably not a small number of people who can't wait for this year to be tossed out...including myself. However, having said that, let's see if we can at least start this final month with some Christmas cheer.
It certainly seems that the 2020 Xmas season on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" may end up as one of the busiest right up to the first year that I began including J-Xmas tunes onto the blog since I've been bookmarking some of the Japanese Yuletide stuff for several months and then corresponding with Scott who is quite the enthusiast for the rarefied genre of J-Xmas songs. Yesterday, I was able to get a sampler of some of those special songs from him which range from the 1950s all the way to the early 2000s.
Right off the bat, I was able to hear this one which is the topic of this article, Izumi Yukimura's（雪村いづみ）"Jingle Bells Mambo" from 1955. As probably I've mentioned this before, I first got to know the vivacious Yukimura through her appearances on television music shows and by that point, she was already well into middle age (currently she's 83) but back in the 1950s, she definitely left the impression of her being very much of the young spark plug.
And as she recorded the spicy "Yume no Mambo"（夢のマンボ）earlier in that same year of 1955, she came up with a feisty bilingual mambo version of "Jingle Bells" that practically screams for dirty martinis and candy canes to be served in a lounge. Yukimura really sank her teeth into the vocals like me into turkey. Seiichi Iida（井田誠一）, who had written the lyrics for "Yume no Mambo", provided the translated words for "Jingle Bells" that have probably become the standard Japanese delivery of the James Pierpont song including that version by Bob McGrath that I wrote about a couple of days ago. As for this cover, I couldn't find it on her J-Wiki discography and from the thumbnail for the video above, it looks like it probably wasn't an official single by her since it was placed on one side of that 45" record while Frank Nagai（フランク永井）had his cover of "Good Night Sweetheart" on the other side.
Considering that I've given two different Japanese-language takes on "Jingle Bells" in short order, I think that I will retire the song for the rest of the season and see if there are any versions of some of the other Xmas classics out there.
I haven't seen that image, but I have seen a 45 with her and Frank Nagai. The 78 I won also includes his "Good Night Sweetheart" on the B-side. "Jingle Bells" was one of the go-to Christmas songs in the 50s and 60s. I've even seen albums with one or both sides made up entirely of "Jingle Bells." Akira Fuse's version is worth looking up. It's almost as fun as Terry Terauchi and the Bunnys.
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