Yukiko (Yuyu) Iwai -- Dotten Charleston（ドッテン・チャールストン）

 

One of the YouTube videos that I always go back and watch just to put me in a good mood is "Old Movie Stars Dance to Uptown Funk" on the Nerd Fest UK channel. Like a lot of the commenters for this masterpiece, I think that it does deserve some sort of award for the hard work, long hours and genius editing that must have gone into it, and I think that it even overshadows the original music video featuring Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. Fred and Gene would probably be grinning from ear to ear wherever they are.

Last night, I was doing the exact same thing but then I noticed this video on the right with the title of "20's Charleston Dance - 'Black Bottom'" on the JazzyFeet channel. I marveled at how choreographer and performer Maria brought back the vivaciousness of this (19)20s dance into the (20)20s. Talk about being light on one's feet! 

Through a past article here, I already knew that the Charleston was about to celebrate 100 years of folks cutting up a rug, but when I checked up its Wikipedia article, I learned that the dance was popularized from 1923, thanks to pianist James P. Johnson's "The Charleston" song from the Broadway show "Runnin' Wild". Now if I figure that it had become popular in 1923, perhaps the dance would have existed for at least some months back in 1922, so it could very well be the case that the Charleston can celebrate its first century this year. 

So I was thinking whether I could find a Charleston-themed kayo. After I had a couple of them already up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus": Shojotai's（少女隊）"Motto Charleston"（もっとチャールストン）and Toshihiko Tahara's（田原俊彦）"Charleston ni wa Mada Hayai"（チャールストンにはまだ早い）, I was kinda hoping beyond hope that could be a third such song that I could track down, but I got lucky.

Yukiko Iwai's（岩井由紀子）"Dotten Charleston" is a short-and-sweet jazz tune that was a part of NHK's "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）TV music vignette series for children, and the song had its run between December 1990 and January 1991. Lyricist Kumiko Yoshizawa（吉沢久美子）and composer Ayahiko Hara（原礼彦）were responsible for this entry although I admit that I'm not sure what the word dotten means; maybe it's a form of onomatopoeia? Regardless, it's too bad that the original animated video isn't around on YouTube, but I'm happy enough with the song.

As well, certainly it's nice to have former Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）member Iwai, who was also known affectionately as Yuyu（ゆうゆ）in her aidoru days, on the blog at last. Her number in the club was 19 by the way. Along with her work with Onyanko Club, she also had her own solo singles between 1987 and 1989 plus four albums and as many BEST albums. She was born in Yokohama but was raised in Funabashi City, Chiba Prefecture, just down the Tozai Line from my old neighbourhood in Ichikawa City. To be honest, I didn't notice her singing work but I do remember her for her appearances in television commercials back in the day (such as the first one to start off the video below).