TROUBLE, TROUBLE!
For a number of folks in my generation living in Southern Ontario back when we were kids, we probably caught this cartoon "Fables of the Green Forest" on TV Ontario. It always started with Sammy Jay yelling the above words to herald another adventure with that happy theme song and a bunch of really friendly animals.
My reaction on first seeing Rocky the mountain rat and the bunch was very similar to the one that I had when I found out that the early 1970s anime "Gatchaman"（ガッチャマン）, that I had first been seeing in the thick tomes of manga that my parents bought me at the Furuya food store in downtown Toronto, was appearing on the Buffalo ABC affiliate as "Battle of the Planets" in the late 1970s. It was surprise and delight because I also had first seen this cartoon in the pages of a manga tome. I believe that all of us who loved "Fables of the Green Forest" realized that our interest in anime came a whole lot earlier than expected.
Now, the original title for the 1973 anime was "Yamanezumi Rocky Chuck"（山ねずみロッキーチャック...Rocky Chuck The Mountain Rat） which had its year-long run on Fuji-TV, and the opening theme song was "Midori no Hidamari" (The Sunny Spot Among the Green) by Micchi to Chatterers（ミッチーとチャタラーズ...Micchi and Chatterers）, a group consisting of veteran singer Mitsuko Horie（堀江美都子）and three men who have remained unnamed (I hope that at least they got their royalties). Compared to the folksy melody that had been recorded for the English-language version of the show, "Midori no Hidamari" has got more of a beat; in fact, I think it also has some elements of 1960s French jazz and it comes across as a somewhat mischievous trickster of a tune.
Seiichiro Uno（宇野誠一郎）was responsible for the melody while Chinatsu Nakayama（中山千夏）provided the lyrics. Nakayama already has some representation on the blog for her 1969 folk single "Anata no Kokoro ni" (あなたの心に). Uno also took care for the entire soundtrack behind "Yamanezumi Rocky Chuck".
Micchi to Chatterers tackled the ending theme as well. Titled "Rocky to Polly" (Rocky and Polly), it was Uno behind the composition but the lyrics this time were written by Morihisa Yamamoto（山元護久）. Incidentally, singer Horie was also behind a 1988 anime theme that has recently become a Future Funk favourite.
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