Lisa Akikawa -- Souyo Mambo（そうよ Mambo）

 

I never saw the 1983 movie "Tantei Monogatari"（探偵物語...Detective Story） starring Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）and the late Yusaku Matsuda（松田優作）, but I certainly remember the slightly haunting title track sung by Yakushimaru herself. It definitely has the fingerprints of composer Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）and done up as this grand romantic ballad.

What I didn't know was that the soundtrack for the movie has its own article on J-Wiki although my discovery of one of the songs on the record was through YouTube rather than the article itself. "Souyo Mambo" (Yes, It's the Mambo) has got those lovely Latin jazz horns but it also has the use of a cheesy-sounding keyboard that makes it sound as if it had been performed at a lounge in a Holiday Inn in the 1980s. You know, the one that has the singer telling everyone to drive safely and that people can go for one more round at the buffet table before it closes for the night. I've got no idea where in the movie it had been placed but I could imagine the scene being of Hiroko and Yusaku in some tropical-themed hole-in-the-wall in Tokyo.

One of the commenters for the video above for "Souyo Mambo" rather likened the performance by singer Lisa Akikawa（秋川リサ）to a pleasant round of karaoke, and to be honest, I don't think that chanteuses like Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）and Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）would have felt particularly threatened. Still, compared to my average take in the karaoke bar or box, Akikawa isn't too bad but then again, her occupation isn't listed as singer on J-Wiki. She's an actress, model and tarento who once had a regular gig on NTV's late-night program "11 PM" in the 1970s under the name of Lisa Tatsuki（立木リサ）. 

Under that particular name, there is a KKP article when she recorded a duet with the late movie/music critic Yuji Konno（今野雄二）for "Kibun wo Dashite Mou Ichido"（気分を出してもう一度）in the late 1970s. Konno had also been a regular on the aforementioned "11 PM". Interestingly enough, "Souyo Mambo" was created by the same duo behind "Kibun wo Dashite Mou Ichido", the husband-and-wife team of lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）and composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）with Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）handling the arrangements for all but two tracks (including the title track) on the entire album. The soundtrack, by the way, hit No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies, selling a little over 150,000 records.