Checking into my Twitter account last night, one fellow tweeter divulged the information that January 11th is Chiemi Eri's（江利チエミ）birthday and had she lived beyond her all-too-short life, she would have been 85 years old today.
At first, I thought that I would acknowledge the late Eri's birthday with one of her most recognized songs, a cover of "Tennessee Waltz", only to realize that I'd already written about it back in late 2016. But taking on my "never-say-die" attitude, I did find another cover that she did (and in the 1950s and 1960s, it was de rigueur for singers to cover the Western hits) in 1958 for Canadian singer-songwriter Paul Anka's late 1957 "You Are My Destiny". The Japanese version by Eri was translated into "Kimi wa Waga Sadame"（君は我が運命）. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the person who was responsible for the Japanese lyrics.
I'd never heard of "You Are My Destiny" before, but it strikes me as this fairly anguished heart-on-one's-sleeve confession of love. It's quite the jazzy torch song and I wonder whether (tongue-in-cheek) the ballad was the inspiration for the many one-sided love kayo in the decades to come.
For comparison, here is the original "You Are My Destiny" by the young Anka. It was a hit on the Billboard chart, coming in at No. 8 in 1958. With that title, though, I couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in the very first "Back to the Future" when George McFly kept screwing up that sentence for Lorraine.
I love Chiemi Eri. I'll probably be covering her Christmas music in March. For the longest time, her 1961 album was the most expensive record I'd bought. I'd love to be able to see some her movies. I've seen some clips on YouTube, but no full movies and nothing with subtitles. AppleTV streams several of them, but only in Japan.
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