Naomi Akimoto -- Speak Low

 

The first time that I had ever heard of the term "speak low" was a few years back when I saw this YouTube video which is more than a decade old now. It was the name of a Japanese cocktail involving two types of rum, matcha and a hint of yuzu. Wouldn't mind trying that out...and taking that stretcher back to my hotel room in Tokyo.

Now, how did a cocktail get a name like Speak Low? Well, it may have been inspired by a 1943 pop song and jazz standard composed by Kurt Weill and written by Ogden Nash. The above video has Weill himself singing "Speak Low" with him playing the piano, I assume. Its popularity has been such that folks ranging from Frank Sinatra to Barbra Streisand have covered the song over the decades.

I'm sure that a lot of Japanese jazz singers have also covered "Speak Low" but I can say that Naomi Akimoto's（秋本奈緒美）version of the song is quite different. Now, I just posted a song by her less than a couple of weeks ago which breaks my Prime Directive of waiting at least a month before posting a song by the same artist. Then again, just like on "Star Trek", the Prime Directive gets bent or broken all the time. 

Besides, I was so smitten by her "Speak Low" that I couldn't resist. Resistance is futile, after all. A track on her 2nd album "One Night Stand" from June 1982, an album that seems to consist of covers of jazz songs, her "Speak Low" has been rearranged into Japanese City Pop or 80s American urban contemporary. I could almost swear that David Foster or Greg Phillinganes or Rod Temperton had something to do with this one. As for the Japanese lyrics, they were supplied by singer-songwriter Tomoko Aran（亜蘭知子）.