Akira Terao & Yasuo Tanabe -- Juu-roku no Natsu（16の夏）

 

I've got to admit that this quite a find and my thanks to YouTuber lovely record for posting this song onto the platform, and hopefully the channel won't mind too much about me going ahead and talking about it so soon following its posting a week ago.

Both Akira Terao（寺尾聰）and Yasuo Tanabe（田辺靖雄）are known to me. Of course, Terao started out in the Group Sounds craze in the 1960s but then in the early 1980s, he became an unexpected music superstar in the middle of his acting career when he hit pay dirt with City Pop fare such as "Shadow City". On the other hand, though Tanabe also began singing in the 1960s, he was more in the Mood Kayo realm with songs such as "Lullaby Tokyo"（ララバイ東京）. 

Little did I realize or expect, however, that both Terao and Tanabe would get together in the mid-1970s to do a doo-wop duet called "Juu-roku no Natsu" (Summer at 16). It seems to have been a collaboration out of the blue although I admit that I don't know how close their relationship; maybe they have been good buddies all this time. In any event, August 1977 (the release date of the single) isn't exactly a time period where I would think about all that American 1950s leather jacket-and-bobbysoxer culture in Tokyo. Perhaps it was still a couple of years away. However, Terao and Tanabe were behind words, music and mikes with this nostalgic tune that could have had folks like Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）and Fonzie nodding in inspiration. And the bonus is that folk band Off-Course（オフコース）was also part of the plan as backup chorus. In fact, Off-Course guitarist Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）and Godiego's（ゴダイゴ）Mickie Yoshino（ミッキー吉野）were behind the arrangement. I can taste the tall strawberry malted milkshake right now.