Hatsumi Shibata -- Bye Bye Hummingbird（バイバイ・ハミングバード）

 

First off, Happy Monday and to the final full week of January 2023. Yep, it seems as if the calendar is already warping ahead. Hopefully, all of you had a good weekend, especially those celebrating Chinese New Year.

I have heard of the old 1960s musical and title tune "Bye Bye Birdie" as sung by Ann-Margret in the movie version, but I was unaware of this "Bye Bye Hummingbird" by the late chanteuse Hatsumi Shibata（しばたはつみ）. This was a track from her June 1976 3rd album "Lots of Love".

"Bye Bye Hummingbird" is one interesting animal. Starting off with a bluesy guitar riff, Shibata and company go into a sultry torch song; perhaps "torch" may not be the accurate term here because it sounds as if the singer has already brought her love into a compromising position (or several) on the bed. It's all jazzy and urban with some of that Henry Mancini classiness. And here I thought that the song would remain that way. However, a little over halfway through "Bye Bye Hummingbird", something happens that I can analogize through the following conversation. Let's imagine Shibata and the lucky guy on the Serta!

Shibata: Oh, h-o-n-e-y! Can we do something else?💋

Mr. Lucky: Heh, heh. You are an energetic one, aren't you? Sure, what?😍

Shibata: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.....let's hop in the BMW and take a ride right now!😀

Mr. Lucky: !?😨

Yup, lazing about on the mattress just went out the window. The music suddenly takes things off into a new direction thanks to a sudden increase in the tempo and a blast of brass. And everyone's off to the melodic races at 100 km/h. Go figure on that. Anyways, poet and playwright Shuji Terayama（寺山修司）wrote the lyrics to "Bye Bye Hummingbird" while the cool 1970s City Pop melody was provided by Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）, a composer who knows his way around some horn-powered goodness. A couple of years later, he would come up with the immortal "Lupin III" theme and then a theme for a cop show that could have been a battering ram itself.