Barb Satake -- Neon Gawa（ネオン川）

 

I have to say that among all of the ways that singers have gotten their stage names, this is probably one of the more interesting ones. Yutaka Satake（佐武豊）from Kushiro, Hokkaido up north was all of 22 years old in 1957 when he made his way south to Tokyo to try and make it big as a singer, and as such, he got gigs at nightclubs while strumming his guitar. 

However, because of the kanji of his family name「佐武」, he often got called "Sabu" instead of "Satake", so to remedy that, that second kanji「武」in "Satake" was changed to 「竹」so there would be no confusion. Also since 「竹」means "bamboo" in English, it was decided that even his first name would get a change from Yutaka to Barb「バーブ」 since apparently "Barb" sounds close enough to "bamboo" ("Sports Nippon" said it, not me); I guess losing that voiced bilabial nasal consonant doesn't change things all that much, linguistically speaking in Japanese. Even J-Wiki was aware enough that "Barb" is the short form of the female name "Barbara" that the Barb Satake article made it very clear that this was the stage name for a male singer.

Barb Satake's（バーブ佐竹）voice was heard as being quite distinctive to the extent that his music was called "Barb Song" and he had a hit right off the bat with his first single "Onna Gokoro no Uta"（女心の唄...Song of a Heart of a Woman） at the end of 1964. In July 1966, he had another successful single with "Neon Gawa" (Neon River). Written by Hiroshi Yokoi（横井弘）and composed/arranged by Toshio Saeki（佐伯としを）, despite the setting of a drinking area by a river (which would have me thinking Mood Kayo), the instrumentation and feeling is that of a very melancholy enka as folks go there for not only drinks but also acknowledgement of the loss of anything: love, money, the will to live. I can hear that distinctive Barb voice which sounds as if it, and not he, is weeping up a storm. 

Satake appeared four times on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen, between 1965 and 1968. His second appearance would have him perform "Neon Gawa". The singer passed away at the end of 2003 at the age of 68 due to multiple organ failure.