Crest Four Singers -- Elise

 

I still don't know a lot about the vocal group Crest Four Singers aside from the fact that they had started out in the 1970s with Tsunehiro/Norihiro Uchida（内田典宏）as a folk/Mood Kayo group before female vocalist Kazumi Kaai（かあいかずみ）joined. Then, the group went more into the jazz and urban contemporary.

At this point, Crest Four Singers released two albums with their debut being the 1978 "The Crest Four Singers" (the definite article, you might say? Sorry, that was a "Doctor Who" joke), and I've yet to hear the entire album (as provided above) but it seems as if the group was fully in thrall to their jazzier side by this point. At 4:15 of the video is the second track, "Elise", a rum punch of a song with influences that seemingly fly in from Santana, Henry Mancini and disco. Kaai shapes her vocals like a seen-it-all and done-it-all heiress in the lap of luxury while Uchida and the rest of the Singers provide some French in some funky harmony. Listening to the coolness of "Elise", I just kinda wonder why I never heard about Crest Four Singers at the same frequency of fellow vocal acts Hi-Fi Set and Circus.