Duke Aces/Yuzo Kayama -- Daigaku no Wakadaisho（大学の若大将）

 

Right off the top of the NHK "News Watch at 9" broadcast earlier today was the news that actor Kunie Tanaka（田中邦衛）had passed away at the age of 88 on March 24th. He was a star of both the big and small screen, but I first got to know him through his commercials such as the one above. From what I've read of his biography, he had played everyone from thugs to amiable middle-management section chiefs.

His most famous role though was that of Goro Kurosaka in the 1981 Fuji-TV drama "Kita no Kuni kara"（北の国から）in which he played a gas station employee who got tired of life in Tokyo, and after hearing about his wife's affair, he took the kids and headed back up to his hometown of Furano in Hokkaido Prefecture.

However, a few decades earlier, Tanaka co-starred with singer/actor Yuzo Kayama（加山雄三）in the "Wakadaisho" franchise of movies which had the former playing the comical foil to the latter's heroic presence.

Tanaka was known primarily as an actor but he did put out a couple of his own records, one of which I will profile sometime during the weekend. However, for this article, I will focus on the theme song for the very first in the "Wakadaisho" series, "Daigaku no Wakadaisho" (Sir Galahad in Campus) which was released in 1961. Given the same title as the movie itself, the theme song "Daigaku no Wakadaisho" was performed by vocal group Duke Aces（デューク・エイセス）. It's a hearty and uptempo song matching Kayama's optimistic can-do-anything title character. Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）provided the lyrics and Kentaro Hirose（広瀬健次郎）composed the music. Kayama himself sang a cover of "Daigaku no Wakadaisho" which became the B-side to his debut single "Yoru no Taiyo"（夜の太陽）from July 1961.