Morton Gould -- So In Love/Night and Day

Wikimedia Commons

This week's Reminiscings of Youth will be a little more unusual and involved so please bear with me today. For one thing, this really ought to be one of those Reminiscings of Babyhood articles actually, but I'll explain as we go along.

For citizens and international residents of Japan of a certain age such as myself, there was the weekly Sunday night Hollywood movie of the week on TV Asahi that lasted for decades since the 1960s. So, folks could watch anything from that decade to something more contemporary like a Steven Seagal action flick but it had to fit within the tight two-hour slot with commercials...which often meant that the movie had a fair amount of footage slashed out. Annoying as heck, but that's the way it was. 

The host of "Nichiyou Youga Gekijo"（日曜洋画劇場...The Sunday Western Movie Theatre） for most of its time was the avuncular and dapper movie critic and tarento Nagaharu Yodogawa（淀川長治）. He always showed up at the beginning of the show to introduce the film and then wrap up with his thoughts about it for a few minutes before signing off with "Sayonara, sayonara, sayonara". 

Then, there were the ending credits for "Nichiyou Youga Gekijo" which had stills or slow-motion footage of the movie just presented while this really dramatic and melancholy-sounding song played in the background. In fact, I found the music so sad that I was more than happy to switch the channel. I wouldn't find out until literally several days ago that the piece was a Cole Porter standard called "So In Love" as interpreted by conductor and arranger Morton Gould.

"So In Love" was a song used in one of Porter's famous musicals "Kiss Me Kate" from 1948. It was also used in the 1953 cinematic adaptation, but Gould's interpretation was presumably from 1951. Now that I've heard the whole thing above, I have a better view of it as something more epic and moving. Japanese commenters have complimented it as being very nostalgic since they used to watch the Sunday movie of the week when they were younger.

But "So In Love" hadn't been the main target for my ROY ROB this week. That was merely a happenstance stumbling discovery. Actually, it was for another Porter classic "Night and Day" which had been created in 1932. I remember getting to see it performed on the 2004 "De-Lovely", the Porter biopic musical starring Kevin Kline where I could glean some more insight into what the song was about.

Now, I realize that there have been many renditions of "Night and Day", sung and instrumental. But the reason that I started all this was that I remember the very first rendition that I heard of this song and it was by the aforementioned Morton Gould through his 1961 record "Kern/Porter Favorites" although that track later showed up on our "RCA 50 Years Of Hits In Stereo" that I wrote about last October. 

According to his Wikipedia article, Gould was a master of interweaving different musical genres into formal classical structure without losing any of the main elements from either the adopted genres or the original song. Gould had a few more contributions to my family's "RCA 50 Years of Hits In Stereo" which were "Brazil" and "Blues in the Night" and I note that he was epic and playful with those.

With "Night and Day", he showed that same verve for grandness. His take took the ultimate song of pining away in love and made it into his own overture movie. To me, his "Night and Day" sounds like a romance between two people rudely interrupted by war with the happy and grateful return interpreted as this huge orchestral rush. And it just happened to be a song that I heard often enough as a kid on the old RCA stereo.

So, let's see about some of the major singles of 1961 in Japan.

Kyu Sakamoto -- Ue wo Muite Arukou (上を向いて歩こう)

Yujiro Ishihara & Junko Makimura -- Ginza no Koi no Monogatari （銀座の恋の物語）

Hitoshi Ueki -- Suudara Bushi (スーダラ節）

Ken Tsumura/Naomi Chiaki -- Shanghai Gaeri no Lil（上海帰りのリル）

 

Well, no, the above isn't Shanghai but Yokohama's Chinatown...just thought it would be nice to add some atmosphere somehow.

A few hours ago, I watched the Tuesday night episode of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン） and vocal group Junretsu（純烈）was up once more to sing an old kayo from 1951. The year alone caught my attention since I knew that none of us had written anything from that year since my article on Teruko Akatsuki's（暁テル子）"Minnesota no Tamago Uri"（ミネソタの卵売り）back in 2017.

But at the same time, listening to Junretsu's rendition of "Shanghai Gaeri no Lil" (Shanghai Lil), it was nice to hear that old sing-song melody from way back so I decided to track it down on YouTube and J-Wiki, if possible. And sure enough, it was possible. The original was first recorded in June 1951 by singer Ken Tsumura（津村謙）who had debuted in 1943 under his birth name of Tadashi Matsubara（松原正）for Teichiku Records but was soon drafted into the war.

In 1946, he made another debut under his new stage name of Ken Tsumura but didn't register any hits until "Shanghai Gaeri no Lil" which was released for sale a month after its recording. A kayo about searching for a lost love, it became a huge hit written by Juzaburo Tojo（東條寿三郎）, (partially) composed by Masanobu Tokuchi（渡久地政信）and arranged by Isao Hayashi（林伊佐緒）as a tune with a tango twist.

According to the J-Wiki article for "Shanghai Gaeri no Lil", the title, the lyrical content and the intro for the kayo were straight from the theme song "Shanghai Lil" for the 1933 American movie "Footlight Parade" starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell. The original song was written by Al Dubin and composed by Harry Warren.

With the success of "Shanghai Gaeri no Lil" (by 1954, it would sell over 300,000 records), Tsumura was given his invitation to join the 2nd Kohaku Utagassen which was broadcast on radio on January 3rd 1952 followed by a movie based on the song that was released in April. There would even be successful sequels to "Shanghai Gaeri no Lil" with the same singer and songwriters providing listeners with "Lil wo Sagashite kurenai ka"（リルを探してくれないか...Won't You Find My Lil?）in that same year and then "Kokoro no Lil yo Naze Tooi"（心のリルよなぜ遠い...Lil of My Heart, Why So Far Away?）in 1953. Apparently for a little while, there were quite a few different songs involving a very busy Lil including the debut of actress/singer Miki Sanjo（三条美紀）with "Watashi ga Lil yo"（私がリルよ...Hey, I'm Lil!）in 1952. And no, I'm not joking about this.

"Shanghai Gaeri no Lil" has been covered by a number of artists over the decades including actress/singer Chieko Baisho（倍賞千恵子）. She gives an even more tangoesque take on the number although I couldn't find out when she recorded her version.

However, I did find this contemporary 1985 bossa nova cover by Naomi Chiaki（ちあきなおみ）from her album "Minato ga Mieru Oka"（港が見える丘...The Hill Overlooking the Harbor）. It still brings in the tango, though.

As for Tsumura, he would appear on the Kohaku a grand total of eight times between 1952 and 1958. He would continue to come up with the hits for the duration of the 1950s but in November 1961, he was coming home late one night from a round of mah jongg and not wanting to wake up his family, he decided to sleep it off in his car while in the garage. The strange thing to me was that he had left the engine running and although he was rushed to the hospital, he died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 37.

Teruko Akatsuki -- Minnesota no Tamago Uri（ミネソタの卵売り）

I've liked eggs since I was little but had always preferred that they be so hard-boiled or hard-fried that I would have to chisel out the yolks. Perhaps another weird thing for Japanese readers is that I like putting soy sauce on them instead of salt or ketchup. Over the years though, I've mellowed out over the hardness. I can even take them fairly soft in any way that they are cooked. But I will still reject raw eggs as much I can without offending any host; I won't even have them with my sukiyaki.

(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)

The above was to have me segue eventually into the song of this article. First off, the NTV variety show, the long-running "Shoten"（笑点）, often had one of the rakugo comedians Kikuo Hayashiya（林家木久扇）in his doltish persona do his running gag of singing something that involved him clucking like a chicken (in Japanese, of course). Kokokoko Kokekko, indeed!

I found out earlier on Sunday afternoon via a performance on NHK's "Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）that Hayashiya's running gag was once a true song titled "Minnesota no Tamago Uri" (Minnesota Egg Seller). It was performed by the later singer-actress Teruko Akatsuki（暁テル子）back in February 1951.

Now I have no idea how songwriters Takao Saeki and Ichiro Tone（佐伯孝夫・利根一郎）came up with a bustling tune about this brash and confident seller of eggs in The Land of 10,000 Lakes. One Japanese fellow on Yahoo even posed the question about its origins but the only answer to come back was that Saeki and Tone probably made the song as a silly gag. Heck, I even checked the Wikipedia entry for the state of Minnesota, the fictional home of Mary Richards, and there was nothing in there that said that the 32nd State was a major supplier of eggs in the United States.

Anyways "Minnesota no Tamago Uri" was another hit in Akatsuki's discography, and the song itself reminds me of the big band brassiness of Shizuko Kasagi's（笠置シヅ子）"Tokyo Boogie-Woogie"（東京ブギウギ）from a few years earlier.

Teruko Akatsuki was born Hisa Sekine（関根ひさ）in the Asakusa district of Tokyo in 1921. Debuting as a child actress in 1933, she made her first foray as a recording artist in 1949 with "Minami no Koi Uta"（南の恋唄...Love Song of the South）and "Kore ga Boogie-Woogie"（これがブギウギ...This is a Boogie-Woogie）. Akatsuki released many singles until 1956 and appeared in the Kohaku Utagassen a total of 4 times including the inaugural show in 1951 on NHK Radio. Sadly, her life was cut short in 1962 due to a heart attack at the age of 41.

Tadashi Hattori -- Radio Taiso （ラジオ体操）

I only realized it in the last couple of minutes but I believe my first encounter with the tradition of radio taiso (radio calisthenics) was during my days at the Toronto Japanese Language School. It was kinda fun jumping and stretching about for 5 minutes on a Saturday morning in the schoolyard. Then there was the JET Programme when I joined the rest of the school twice a week in the mornings outside to do the exercises while the happy piano and the principal were leading the way. The English schools that I worked at from the mid-90s onwards didn't have that tradition but the other corporations did.

Hollywood had at least a couple of instances where the morning exercises of Japan were shown on celluloid. Although I only caught a smattering of episodes of the first season of the sci-fi show "Heroes", there was that one scene in Episode 1 where Hiro Nakamura was doing his calisthenics with the rest of his co-workers. And I even found this scene from the old "Gung Ho" with Michael Keaton (about a Japanese corporation taking over a US car factory) when he was still largely known as a comic actor (still waiting for him to do "Beetlejuice 2"). The workers didn't seem too gung-ho to warm up.

Ironically, though, according to what I found out from the J-Wiki and Wikipedia articles on morning calisthenics was that radio taiso was inspired from the 15-minute radio broadcasts of exercises performed in the United States in the 1920s.

Although radio exercise broadcasts had been attempted in Japan slightly earlier but without musical accompaniment, it was from November 1928 that the first radio taiso known as Radio Taiso One with music was broadcast. The exercises were done to a song titled "Kawaii Kashu"（可愛い歌手...Cute Singer）composed by Naoaki Fukui（福井直秋）with lyrics added later by Toshiko Takeuchi（武内俊子）. You can listen to the Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）cover above with a broadcast from those days.

This first version lasted from 1928 to April 1946 although the broadcasts were halted for a week between August 15th and 22nd 1945. There was a second version with a short lifespan between April 1946 and August 1947 with the music provided by classical composer Tadashi Hattori（服部正）.

The third version of Radio Taiso One and the version that has continued to the present day started from May 1951 with the same composer Hattori. Almost feeling like standing up and doing some of them again...no, not really.

In parallel with Radio Taiso One, there has also been a Radio Taiso Two with different incarnations over the decades beginning in 1932. The current Two began in June 1952 that was composed by Ikuma Dan（團伊玖磨）. My time at the Tsukiyono junior high schools on JET involved me doing both Radio Taiso One and Two.

There was even a Radio Taiso Three that had two versions in 1939 and 1946, both by Kunihiko Hashimoto（橋本國彦）but the second version ended in 1947. In 1999, the 5-minute program "Minna no Taiso"（みんなの体操...Exercise for Everyone）was created by NHK and my family sees it almost everyday at 12:55 pm EST via TV Japan. We politely watch only. According to J-Wiki, this has been dubbed "Radio Taiso Three" although I'm not sure whether the originating network ever officially designated it as such. The music was composed by Toshihiko Sahashi（佐橋俊彦）who has provided music for TV, movie and anime soundtracks.

So, for those folks who have just joined JET (I think the Orientation sessions have just opened in Tokyo this week): first off, welcome to the Programme, and second, look forward to exercising with the teachers and students!

Of course, you can take a look at how this famous technopop band took an affectionate poke at the cultural custom.

Ichiro Fujiyama -- Nicolai no Kane (ニコライの鐘)

I'm not a religious person by any means although I visited my fair share of temples and shrines in Tokyo and at one point, I even went to a Catholic church near Shibuya to attend a Xmas concert featuring a fellow teaching colleague from an old school.

However, I never got to see the church featured in this song although I have to say according to the visuals in the above YouTube video, it's a pretty impressive structure. This is the Holy Resurrection Cathedral which also goes by the name of Nikolai-do. It's located in the Kanda district of Tokyo where it was completed in 1891 and founded by the founder of the Japanese Orthodox Church who would become known as St. Nicholas of Japan. Continuing on from the Wikipedia description, the church was built to look over the Imperial Palace but over the many decades, it has become inundated by the tall skyscrapers.

Yesterday, I caught the latest episode of NHK's "Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）in which one of the local citizen singers came up to sing this old chestnut called "Nicolai no Kane" (The Bells of Nicolai). I thought it was resonant enough for me to write about it today. The original singer was Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）and the song was released in December 1951 with the music by Yuuji Koseki（古関裕而）and words by Yutaka Kadota（門田ゆたか）. "Nicolai no Kane" was way before my time but I was still attracted by its melancholy yet proud arrangement. The first verse spoke about this fine church in the valley as the sun set but then the second verse got to the crux of the ballad as Fujiyama crooned about finding out about the loss of a love and then praying for some help. I couldn't say that this was made as an enka tune but there was plenty of emotion flowing from it to make this a Mood Kayo that didn't take place in a bar...far from it.

Hideo Narumi（鳴海日出夫）performs the song on stage here and I couldn't ask for a better person to sing it than him. His voice has got the right type of vibrato to sing this with the ideal amount of melancholy. Fujiyama actually was able to perform "Nicolai no Kane" on the 6th edition of the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of 1955.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sftrajan/880082492/?ytcheck=1

Fubuki Koshiji -- Ai no Sanka （愛の讃歌）

For a very long time, there was and has been a cultural bond between France and Japan. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone (a best bud of Ronald Reagan's when he was the US President) loved French culture, and apparently former French President Francois Mitterrand was a big fan of sumo. French restaurants of any size seem to populate a lot of street corners in Tokyo and even in my bedroom city of Ichikawa....along the side of any McDonalds or massage clinic. My students took me to one which was situated just metres away from a major highway overpass and a bowling alley. And the quality....and the prices....certainly fit the image of a fine French restaurant.

Chanson was and has made up a small part of the kayo kyoku world almost as far back as when Edith Piaf held audiences enthralled in France. And once in a while, on a TV retrospective, I would see and hear the late vivacious Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪） warble the sounds of "Ai no Sanka".

Born in 1924, the former Mihoko Konno（河野美保子） entered the world of the famed women's acting troupe, The Takarazuka Revue, to become a top star during the latter half of the war and the postwar years.. When she retired from the Revue, she shifted to the world of stage musicals, and around that time, Koshiji recorded a cover of Edith Piaf's "Hymne A L'Amour". As for exactly when the recording was made is of some conjecture. According to the Japanese site OKWave.jp, there were two possibilities, 1951 or 1953. The former year coincided with her departure from the Takarazuka, while the latter year was given on a BEST compilation. I flipped a coin....1951 won. Although Koshiji would continue down the path of chanson until her untimely death in 1980, I think "Ai no Sanka"pretty much cemented her title as The Queen of Chanson in Japan. Her release of the song, with Japanese lyrics by Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子） (with the original composition by Margueritte Monnot and the original lyrics by Piaf herself), sold over 2 million copies.

Edith Piaf will always be the one and original behind her 1949 "Hymne A L'Amour", but I think Koshiji made "Ai no Sanka" her own.

February 8 2022: I have to admit that the 1961 Brenda Lee version of the song, titled "If You Love Me (Really Love Me)", that was used as the ending theme for Episode 4 of "Loki" really got to me.