Noboru Kirishima -- Tanoshii Sasayaki（楽しいささやき）

By Norman Bruderhofer via Wikimedia Commons

 

In terms of my lifeline, I don't quite go as far back as the gramophone above; my parents probably did though. For me, it was still that huge RCA Victor stereo seemingly hewn out of a trunk of a mighty oak tree.

But I did want my thumbnail to reflect the age of this song here although I don't know how popular gramophones were at the turn of the decade between the 1940s and 1950s. And this song is right from August 1949. What I'm writing about is "Tanoshii Sasayaki" (Delightful Whisper) by the crooner Noboru Kirishima（霧島昇）.

The last time Kirishima got his due on the byline was through Noelle's December 2023 article on his collaboration with Ms. Columbia for their "Tabi no Yokaze" (旅の夜風), so I figure that it was time to see him again. The interesting thing is that I gather singles back then didn't have both sides filled with the same singer's songs; it was also the case that there was a bit of a "roommate" thing where different singers occupied the two sides. 

It turns out that Kirishima's "Tanoshii Sasayaki" shared vinyl with the prodigy Hibari Misora's（美空ひばり） debut single "Kappa Boogie Woogie"（河童ブギウギ）. Compared with that jazzy boogie by the future Queen of Kayo Kyoku, "Tanoshii Sasayaki" had more of a "beautiful music" sensibility as designed by lyricist Ko Fujiura（藤浦洸）and composer Takaaki Asai（浅井挙曄）. It's just as playful as the A-side but perhaps more innocent and there are some shifty key changes which feels like the song repeatedly switches from happy kayo to something slightly moodier and Latin and back again.