Yes, I do realize that we are coming to the end of November and September 2025 is now a distant memory. However, I did want to highlight this one.
There's very little written up regarding singer-songwriter Ayako Miyata（宮田あやこ）. Diskunion reports that Miyata may hail from Sapporo, Hokkaido and just when she had made her debut in 1980, illness forced her to retire, at least for some time. Apparently, she's now working as a local singer in Sapporo.
In that fateful year of 1980, she released an album titled "Lady Mockin' Bird" and a lot of musical bigwigs participated in its production such as Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, Sentimental City Romance（センチメンタル・シティ・ロマンス）and Makoto Kubota & Sunset Gang（久保田麻琴＆Sunset Gang） according to another site. The final track on the album is "Ku-gatsu no Umi de" (On the September Sea), a very pleasant song to end "Lady Mockin' Bird" on. Written by the mellow-voiced Miyata and composed by Hiroshi Sayama（佐山博）, it begins with some gentle acoustic guitar and then comes some country rock and balladry that reminds me of some of the music that the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt brought over in the 1970s. It ends with some heartfelt electric guitar.
Ayako Miyata does kind of look like Linda Ronstadt on that album cover, and her voice quality sounds like Linda's in Desperado. The style of the songs "Long Long Time" and "The Track of My Tears" comes pretty close to the style of "九月の海で". My first introduction to Linda Ronstadt was, of course, "Somewhere Out There" from the soundtrack to "An American Tail" movie.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, Miyata does look like Ronstadt in her big hair days. I gather that she and the Eagles were some inspiration for her...maybe even going back to their time as The Stone Poneys. Probably the first Ronstadt song that I ever heard was "It's So Easy" in 1977.
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