Hey, KKP fans! How about taking a look at these puppies? OK...maybe slightly inappropriate but honestly speaking, the good folks at The Pet Collective have amassed this footage of the cutest puppies on Earth. Please enjoy the little ones as I use them as a segue to this song.
Commenter YMOfan04 showed me a number of these videos highlighting Japanese acts from the 1960s that I had never heard about. It made me realize how big the musical pyramids were when it came to the numbers of aidoru or Group Sounds or regular pop singers went in and out the revolving door of the music industry with 90% of them probably staying unknown or barely known while perhaps the top 1% at the peak became the iconic superstars.
One of these acts were called, strangely enough, The Puppies（ザ・パピーズ）. They don't have a J-Wiki entry so I had to do a bit of digging, and at one site, I found out that the duo was a sister act consisting of Nana（吉川ナナ）and Mimi Yoshikawa（吉川ミミ）. Maybe the powers-that-be were going for a similar Peanuts（ザ・ピーナッツ）vibe. Information is still hard to come by but at another site run by Chinpei, I also discovered that in 1968, The Puppies were latched onto a Group Sounds quartet called The Moondogs（ザ・ムーンドッグス）to release one single titled "Ai ga Subete"（愛がすべて...Love is Everything）. Chinpei wondered whether this had been a bit of a desperation move to get their joint careers on the move.
Well, most likely it didn't take since the following year in 1969, The Puppies were back on their own when they released what has been called their second debut single "Aishite Horo Horo"（愛してほろほろ...So In Love）. But I'm focusing today on the B-side of this single "Suki na Hito" (The Man I Love). It is a sweet kayo kyoku ballad with the popular harmonica, jangling guitar and backing orchestra supporting the lovely voices of the Yoshikawa sisters. One notable thing is that this rather short song was created by some big wigs: lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composer Takashi Miki（三木たかし）. However, Chinpei notes that soon after this release, The Puppies faded from view.
It's a pity most of these singers/bands have short-lived careers.
ReplyDeleteYeah, have no idea how these singers/bands were gauged on how they would have succeeded or not.
DeleteEven if their career was short the fact that we are talking about them on this blog means that they were in some way well know or famous otherwise there wouldn't be any information to find about them nor a youtube video on them either.
ReplyDeleteI probably wouldn't say famous here. They are obscure but at least someone was good enough to provide some online presence of them so that we can rediscover them, and fortunate we are to do so. Let's say that they had their five minutes in the sun rather than fifteen minutes.😊
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