Through some of the Author's Picks lists that have been posted up recently, I've come to realize that kayo kyoku songwriters enjoyed certain common words in their titles. Another one is "odoriko" or "dancing girl" (but also "dancing boy" although the former seems to be more common) for some reason. I don't have enough songs in my knowledge to put up another Author's Picks under that theme quite yet, but I can mention that I remember Kozo Murashita's（村下孝蔵）wistful "Odoriko" and Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）swift and stately "Izu no Odoriko"（伊豆の踊子）.
Well, here's another "Odoriko"...this time, the 31st single by the Johnny's aidoru group Four Leaves（フォーリーブス）released in June 1976. Written by Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）when he was still writing as Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, formerly of the Group Sounds band Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets（ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ）, this is quite the brassy tune with a touch of that GS despite it having gone the way of the dodo in the very early 1970s. Compared to the other two songs that I cited in the previous paragraph, the whole thing about Four Leaves' "Odoriko" is a fair bit more sad and salacious as a dancer-for-money slips off the nice-person act and the latest conquest like lint off a sleeve.
For listeners who've picked up on the observation that there seems to be another earlier and more well-known song lurking in the background of "Odoriko", well, I searched that out and I discovered that it takes the riff and chorus from "Let's Live For Today", the 1967 hit by rock band The Grass Roots. "Odoriko" itself scored a No. 41 ranking on Oricon and proved to be the ticket for Four Leaves' 7th and final appearance on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen in their first run between 1968 and 1978.
The song that I think of with this word is the one Vaundy released a couple years ago.
ReplyDeleteAh, thanks for the reminder.
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1976 is one of those underrated years of music and this post provides yet a little bit more evidence of that. I do love that 1970's style boys band harmony theフォーリーブス and their dancing too.
ReplyDeleteIn summer of 1974 my grandfather took my cousin and I to see several movies in a cinema in Hachiōji, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, Evil of Dracula (Chi wo Sū Bara), and Isoge! Wakamono, a film with the Four Leaves. For years I knew it had something to do with the 4-leaf clover, but didn't remember the band name and I wasn't fluent enough at age 10 to understand the whole film, but it did leave an impression that I never forgot. The band is struggling and one of them gets involved with gangsters, and gets stabbed in a very blood-spurting way and dies. The band members later are near a marina releasing a floating lantern, and see in a park another 4-member band playing on a stage and fans are rushing toward them with the 4 -leaf clover banner behind the stage. Looks like they were replaced by new members by the music company.
ReplyDeleteWoof! That's a pretty bittersweet ending...stress on the bitter. I would hope that Johnny's groups back then were not dealt with so cavalierly.
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