Izumi Yukimura -- Sweet and Gentle（スィート・アンド・ジェントル）

 

I gather that there was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the various types of Latin dance music such as the mambo and cha-cha were greatly welcomed in the pop music of Japan and America. Singer Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）back then was also one great purveyor of that brand of music and what a voice she had at the age of 18 in 1955.

A few years ago, I posted one song of hers that got onto the November 1955 Toho musical "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘...So Young, So Bright） which  starred the San-nin Musume（三人娘）of Yukimura, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）. "Yume no Mambo"（夢のマンボ）was given brassy life by Yukimura and was created by lyricist Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）and composed by Hachiro Matsui（松井八郎）.

One other song that got into the movie was "Sweet and Gentle", also by Ida and Matsui. The above video was given the title "Ton-chan Cha-Cha"（トンちゃんCHACHA）but the J-Wiki article on "Janken Musume" has titled it as "Sweet and Gentle" so I'm going to go with that. In any case, it's pretty nostalgic seeing Yukimura hoofing it up with fellow dancers on stage like that; I used to see those on television when I was a very young kid. It's just too bad that there is only one copy of the song on YouTube as of this writing.

A bit of a small video PS from me but for the longest time, I'd been wondering whether weathercaster Rinon Oshima（大島璃音） of "Weathernews Live" actually looked like someone famous. I wouldn't consider Rinon a doppelganger at all, but I think there is a slight resemblance between her and young Izumi...at least from the nose down.