Ichiro Kanbe/Shigeru Amachi -- Nagoya Blues（名古屋ブルース）

 

Happy Monday and a very cool one at that. We here in the GTA probably had our coolest morning so far this fall with a wake-up temperature of 4 degrees Celsius. I'm still seeing Tokyo getting those 30-degree highs, though.

Now for the sake of perfect transparency, one reason that I'm putting up this song "Nagoya Blues" is that when I was looking ahead for the plan to put up the Chubu region's group of go-tochi songs for this coming Saturday, I realized that I had yet to contribute anything go-tochi（ご当地）for the city of Nagoya which is a tad embarrassing for me considering it's been over a decade since I began "Kayo Kyoku Plus". However, part of my attempt at amends is the above tourist video for the capital of Aichi Prefecture by Omotenashi TV. As well, in the past, I have given some indirect tribute to the city whether it be through one of the theme songs for the anime "Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki"（八十亀ちゃんかんさつにっき...Yatogame-chan's Observation Diary）, whose very brief episodes have taken an affectionate poke at Nagoya and the whole thing about it not getting much respect...kinda like the Japanese metropolitan version of Rodney Dangerfield, and putting up songs by Nagoyans Junko Yagami（八神純子）and Sentimental City Romance（センチメンタル・シティ・ロマンス）.

(Unfortunately the video has been taken down.)

However up to today, I hadn't put up a go-tochi song on Nagoya despite a lot of other regional tunes getting a place on the blog. Well, this is "Nagoya Blues" which is a 1971 single by actor/singer Ichiro Kanbe（神戸一郎）who was born Masakatsu Maehara（前原正捷）in the city of Kobe（神戸）. And yes, his stage name was created on the point that his beautiful singing had him referred to as the "Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）of Kobe", thus Ichiro Kanbe (that last name being another way to say the kanji for Kobe). Written by Kousuke Sakurai（桜井幸介）and composed by Keishiro Tsuchida（土田啓四郎）, it's a go-tochi song with some shoutouts to places in Nagoya and the cruelty of love that seems to straddle the line between the downtown bluesiness of Mood Kayo while also retaining some of that elegance of enka.

A decade later in 1981, actor/singer Shigeru Amachi（天知茂）recorded a cover of "Nagoya Blues"（なごやブルース）for which Nagoya was rendered into hiragana instead of kanji for some reason. As well, this version tilts things more into the Mood Kayo style for which Amachi's more gravelly voice fits. Amachi also gave some good Mood Kayo several years earlier for his "Showa no Blues"（昭和のブルース）in 1974.

To complicate things further, there is a completely different "Nagoya Blues"（名古屋ブルース）that was created many years later for Yoko Masaki（真咲よう子）and Los Primos（ロス・プリモス）. I'll have to take a look at that one later on this week.