Agnes Lum -- Ame Agari no Downtown（雨上がりのダウンタウン）

 

As I was mentioning in my previous article, I was out with friends all day yesterday for some lunch downtown and then the movie "Oppenheimer". Meteorologically, we also had quite the thriller outside. As we were chatting and drinking away at our coffee, what had been sunny and hot skies suddenly exploded into a major tropical cloudburst for about five minutes before clearing. Then, perhaps an hour later, we had finally left the coffee shop and barely made it onto a streetcar before another downpour occurred. I've said it before and I'll say it again...Toronto can be predictably unpredictable in the weather department.☂

Well, for the purposes of being coincidentally and meteorologically appropriate, why not have the song "Ame Agari no Downtown" (Downtown After the Rain) as the topic of this article? It was recorded by American model and singer Agnes Lum（アグネス・ラム）as her first of two singles in 1977. Lum is someone that I'd seen on old Japanese television occasionally and indeed she shares a given name with another famous Agnes in the geinokai, Agnes Chan（アグネス・チャン）from Hong Kong.

Agnes Lum, however, hails from Hawaii as the daughter of a Chinese father and a mother of Korean, Native American and Native Hawaiian descent. Since I hadn't known too much about her background, I did find out that she had been working as a model in the Aloha State when she became famous in Japan, too, due to her selection as the very first Clarion Girl in 1975. 

Of course, becoming famous and popular in Japan also means that it's time to cut that record. And so, the whimsical "Ame Agari no Downtown" came to be in July 1977. Lyrics were provided by Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）but unlike the above video's statement that Kunihiko Kase（加瀬邦彦）was the composer, the JASRAC database and one other lyrics website have stated that it was singer-songwriter and actor Yuzo Kayama（加山雄三）under his regular songwriting pseudonym of Kosaku Dan（弾厚作）who actually composed "Ame Agari no Downtown". According to the Wikipedia article on Lum, the song reached No. 79 on Oricon with the hint that she was able to get onto that year's Kohaku Utagassen because of it. However, the J-Wiki article with the original source being the book "Dankai Punch 4"（団塊パンチ 4）states that Lum had actually appeared on the 1976 edition as a guest, over half a year before that first single saw the light of day.

Lum also released a couple of original albums in 1977 and 1978, and she also dabbled in some acting in movies and TV dramas with a number of variety show appearances. Of course, commercials were her main stock-in-trade. However, she retired from show business in 1983.