Mitsuo Hagita -- Secret Love

 

Tonight, I was thinking of doing a Creator article for Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）as I had hinted late last year when I wrote "Oricon Top 5 Most Commercially Successful Arrangers" because of all of the songs that he has handled over the decades.

But then, when I was reading through his J-Wiki biography, I came across one line which said that he had actually come up with a solo album, and thus far, it's the only album that he has created for himself in his long career. His 1976 "Secret Love" under the Toshiba label is an intriguing fusion take on some pop and jazz standards, most of which I've heard from my own variety of sources since I was a kid. In November 2013, the album was re-released just through Tower Records and according to the page devoted to the album on the Tower website, with Hagita arranging all of the nine tracks, some big session musicians were in on the project as well such as Jake H. Concepcion on saxophone/flute, Shin Kazuhara（数原晋）on trumpet, and Kentaro Haneda（羽田健太郎）on keyboards.

I'll also include the original or previous cover versions of some of the songs that are handled by Hagita in "Secret Love". And that would include the first and title track, "Secret Love", which was originally sung by Doris Day in her 1953 movie "Calamity Jane". Written by Sammy Fain and composed by Paul Francis Webster, I hadn't actually heard the Day original but my first experience with the song was strangely through Bugs Bunny in one of his cartoons. Thanks, Mel Blanc!

"Secret Love" the first track under Hagita's ministrations is how one commenter for the video described it: the cover looks like how the song sounds. It's a romantic 70s disco-fueled soaring cruise through the night sky above the sleepy seaside town. The aforementioned Haneda is having a great ol' time on the keyboards while the horns blast away. Overall, "Secret Love" fulfills that one rule of a jazz cover in that it does contain the recognizable main melody but it's not a straight line from intro to coda; the melody is given a very liberal scenic route all over the place by the musicians.

I was indeed around as a little squib for "Aquarius (Let the Sunshine In)", the 1969 single by The 5th Dimension which I always felt was the pop theme song for all of the hippies back then. Hagita's space funk take on the song (Track 3) is probably something that I would have heard at a summer music festival. The "Let the Sunshine In" part is more of a really funky echo with the backup singers.

Track 4 is "Sunrise, Sunset" which is from the 1964 musical "Fiddler on the Roof". I first heard it, though, at my elementary school's musical cavalcade one night without knowing the original source. Hagita's take is more of a bluesy jazz sax and guitar ballad as if it belonged to some sort of Mickey Spillane-based film noir. For some reason, I think this version can even fit in an episode of "Cowboy Be-Bop" or even "City Hunter".

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" , all the way from 1911 by the legendary Irving Berlin is performed here by The Andrews Sisters and on "Secret Love" as Track 6. But The Andrews Sisters weren't the ones to introduce me to the song; actually, my ears first came upon this on one of the old afternoon cartoons that I used to watch. It's done by Hagita here as if someone decided to invite the cimbalom used in all those 60s spy movies including the Harry Palmer series for a country jazz-pop jam session in the barn. 

It's approaching a century since Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'" came out in 1929 but my introduction to it was an instrumental version on one of those long-gone LPs of standards that had come with our old and oaken RCA Victor stereo record player in the 1960s. I wouldn't know about its origins for many years until I started waking up to the pleasures of jazz while I was living in Japan. However, the "Secret Love" version is a relentlessly cheerful funky fusion cover with some swing horns that could almost serve as a theme song for a 1970s TV sitcom.

That's all that I will provide but for those who've gotten the album, tell us what you think. If it's available, I would be happy to get my hands on a copy, and considering that all this time, I've known him as one of the names on liner notes for many many songs by many singers, "Secret Love" is indeed a revelation. But I'll get that Creator article up for Hagita soon.