Johnny Yoshinaga -- Go-gatsu no Kaze（五月の風）

 

Back in October 2019, I wrote up an article on "Sweet My Baby" and "Open Your Eyes", a couple of songs by rock band Pink Cloud（ピンククラウド）which consisted of consisted of guitarist/vocalist Char, bassist Masayoshi "Louise Louis" Kabe（加部正義）, and drummer/vocalist Johnny Yoshinaga（ジョニー吉長）. Of course, the three individual musicians also had their own solo parts of their careers. I've covered Char and Kabe, and now it's Yoshinaga's turn.

Johnny Yoshinaga, whose real name was Nobuki Yoshinaga（吉長信喜）, released a solo album in 1980 titled "Hello Kids", and I've fallen quite hard for one of the tracks...the 8th one, to be exact. At 36:03 is "Go-gatsu no Kaze" (The Winds of May). With the Fender Rhodes and the harmonious horns gently bringing the listener in, the strawberry at the top of this shortcake is Yoshinaga's bluesy voice and that falsetto of his. It's the type of song that generally demands a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks.

I think part of what makes "Go-gatsu no Kaze" so likeable for me is indeed the horns and the languid arrangement. As a kid, I watched my fair share of "Saturday Night Live" off and on from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. No matter how great or how horrifying the skits were, the one constant was the ending when everyone got on stage to say goodnight and then the SNL band started up to see everyone off with what I would consider to be an urban lullaby with the horns. "Go-gatsu no Kaze", written by Takemi Yoshida（吉田健美）and composed by Masato Sugimoto（杉本真人）, reminds me of the ol' sendoff at the end of each and every episode of SNL. It is rather reminiscent of a jazzy good night before slumber.

Yoshinaga was born in the city of Kokura in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1949, and as a musician, he started his career around 1965 by first participating with Checkmates（チェックメイツ）, a blues-rock band in Kobe. Later on, he would start up his own group, Yellow,（イエロー） in 1972. He would also have his first solo album in 1977, "Johnny"（ジョニー）, before getting together in the following year with Char and Kabe to form JOHNNY, LOUIS & CHAR, later to be renamed Pink Cloud.

The drummer had been married to soulful singer Mari Kaneko（金子マリ）before divorcing in 1999, and they have two sons, drummer Nobuaki Kaneko（金子ノブアキ）of the band RIZE and bassist KenKen. Yoshinaga passed away in June 2012 at the age of 63.