Over the years, I've put out APBs on some mystery songs and a few of them have actually been resolved to our great relief and satisfaction. Personally, I've also been searching for songs but not quite in the same way. They've actually been part of my collection with all of the relevant information but I just hadn't seen them on the Internet. A couple of them belong to one of my favourite underrated songbirds, Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）.
One song got its due many years ago, I'm happy to say. "Gas Tou"（ガス燈）, which is a track on Kurahashi's March 1986 album "Main Course", finally appeared on YouTube so I was more than happy to get it onto the article for the album. And just today, I found another one that took quite a while to find its way on the Net.
Like "Gas Tou", "By The River" is a jazz tune which made its first presence known on the singer's September 1982 album "Heartbreak Theater" (although for me, I found it on her 1999 BEST album "My Name is Ballad"). However, whereas "Gas Tou" sounded like a 1940s torch song from a film noir, "By The River" is simply a blissful 1950s jazzy number which may been inspired by a lazy weekday afternoon in some mansion on Long Island. Kurahashi herself sounds like she's lying right on that chaise lounge facing the window while her butler is peeling some grapes for her ingestion. It's a fine lying-down song which is also why I dubbed it a Fashion Music song. After all, the chaise lounge is the international piece of furniture representing the genre. In any case, Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）was responsible for the lyrics while Kiyonori Matsuo（松尾清憲）took care of the music. To be honest, I'd assumed that it was jazz-and-City Pop hound Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）who was the composer here.
Your mystery song posts have always been a lot of fun! I think there are a lot of interesting mysteries in the music world of Japan. Nice post on yet another singer from Hokkaido 倉橋ルイ子 . She seems to have kept her hair short and her image the same for most of her career.
ReplyDeleteHello, Brian. Kurahashi, as far as I know, has ever shown herself professionally even with shoulder-length hair. There have been a few sips of rock in her career but for most of it, it's been about the light pop and Fashion Music.
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