I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
It's frigid as all heck out there in Toronto but March 17th, aka St. Patrick's Day, wasn't going to send anyone away from the Irish pubs, and I'm assuming that the places are still jam-packed with folks enjoying the Irish holiday. I personally don't celebrate the holiday myself but I remember a few times back in my Tokyo days when I joined fellow teachers and students for a pint at the local Irish pubs there such as Dubliners.
I recall in past years that I tried to come up with kayo kyoku with an Irish theme on St. Patrick's Day, but came up wanting. I think in those cases, I searched and perhaps found some songs with "Green" in their titles.
Well, I realized that the 1913 folk song"Danny Boy" has been sung in Japan through what I've learned while doing the blog over the years and from performances on TV by the older kayo kyoku singers. Although I don't know when the above performance was made, Akira Fuse（布施明）has given his own rendition of the tear worthy ballad. And below, there is singer-songwriter Ayaka Hirahara（平原綾香）with her cover of "Danny Boy" which was on her 2011 album"My Classics 3" with her own Japanese lyrics.
I just had to include Bing Crosby's take from 1943. Anyways, I hope that all of you are enjoying yourselves out there tonight.
Man, I hope the Xmas revelers are enjoying really hot cocoa and nothing radioactive above. But it is indeed the season.
Of course, one of the great Christmas musical chestnuts out there is "Winter Wonderland" which was first recorded in 1934 by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith, according to Wikipedia. Since then, the song has been covered by so many artists everywhere, and of course, that includes Bing Crosby. It wouldn't be a KKP Christmas without Der Bingle. And so, he came up with his version in 1962. The snazzy one with the cool video above may be the 1962 version or any subsequent version by him but let's just go with that year, shall we? His baritone will always be welcome in my ears at this time.
I've had this version of "Winter Wonderland" on the backlog for quite a while now, and I figure that it must have come from one of Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" episodes, since I could never imagine a ska version of the classic. But here we are.
akiko is a jazz singer who has been on the blog before with her 2003 take on "Good Morning Heartache", originally performed by Billie Holiday. Well, she provides her jaunty collaboration with The Ska Flames in "Winter Wonderland" via her 2007 release "A White Album". The band has been around since 1985 and has released six albums and eight singles up to 2020.
Merry Christmas to one and all! I'm hoping that all of you who may be reading this are enjoying December 25th with family and friends and savoring the amity and smells of the season (turkey, potatoes and the like). The Kyoku family is certainly doing and so, and I believe that they'll be having an appropriate get-together later on tonight.
For the final Xmas 2024 entry on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I've decided to go with a special Reminiscings of Youth song, and what better song to put on here than "White Christmas". Now of course, Bing Crosby is the traditional representative for this perennially sung Yuletide tune but I did want to begin with chanteuse Barbra Streisand because she wasn't only on that early 1970s Ronco compilation LP "A Christmas Gift" that my parents got me, but she was the first entertainer that I heard to sing the Irving Berlin classic while including that mystery first verse that's been usually omitted in other renderings of the song because it just took away (if briefly) that feeling of snow and cold and Christmas atmosphere. Apparently, Streisand's version was first heard on her 1967 album"A Christmas Album", and it's a solemn yet hopeful rendition.
"White Christmas" was first brought to ears in the 1942 holiday-themed musical "Holiday Inn" starring Crosby and Fred Astaire. It was one of many songs that was featured in this flick regarding Crosby's character's whimsical pursuit of running a countryside hotel that was only open on national holidays.
But "Holiday Inn" was a movie that I wouldn't discover until far into my life (actually, it was the Xmas episode of "SCTV" that introduced me to the existence of "Holiday Inn"). Before then, I had been accustomed to hearing it on those Crosby TV specials annually, Elvis Presley's cover of it, and then the movie "White Christmas" (directed by Michael Curtiz, the same guy behind the legendary "Casablanca") which came out in October 1954. Reading through the Wikipedia article on it, I'm not sure whether "White Christmas" the movie had been meant as a direct reconstruction of "Holiday Inn" despite the key presence of a countryside inn.
The movie was an annual ritual in my television life, especially at a time when I had known no other Turner Classic Movies-friendly Xmas flick at the time; "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 42nd Street" would come to my attention many years later. "White Christmas" had a bigger main cast than "Holiday Inn" and between the bookends of the rendition of the song, the movie was chock-filled with some great song-and-dance moments (I've already talked about "Snow"here) such as "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing" with Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen, and may I say that Kaye was a great addition in terms of both his dancing and comedic prowess compared to Astaire who wouldn't join this movie and Donald O'Connor who had to bow out due to illness.
Of course, there is also the whole "Sisters" bit with the Haynes Sisters and then the parody by Bing and Danny. I'd always wondered whether the latter was ad-libbed since the laughter from the guys looked so genuine. And as it turned out, it was.
Is it a perfect Xmas movie? Maybe not...there were a few scenes in there that had me thinking "Yep, it was way back in the mid-20th century, wasn't it?" but that was then and this is now. Also, I've never been a fan of that latter-half manufactured tiff between Bob and Betty but I guess the writers felt that there had to be some conflict when things may have gotten too cozy for the couples too soon. Still, after not having seen "White Christmas" in many years now, I wouldn't mind taking another gander at it someday.
In any case, what are some other big songs from Japan that were hitting the airwaves in 1954?
Toronto got its first snowfall this morning with a couple of inches expected by the evening. I'm not sure whether this is the beginning of a snow-filled winter but as such, the accumulation may be enough for the local kids to take delight outside. Mayo, Kayo and Nayo Kyoku with Mr. Calico seem to think so. Anyways, I thought that it would be nice on this Hump Day to add at least one more Author's Pick to finish up 2024 since the last one in tribute to Casablanca. The theme here is songs with "snow" in the title.
To wrap up, I've already got Bing Crosby aboard "Kayo Kyoku Plus" so why not have him do his rendition of "Snow" from the 1954 movie "White Christmas"? Well, he's got his buddies helping him out, too.
Let's imagine that the live-action Kayo Grace Kyoku is spending some Christmas time in a bar which is obviously well stocked. I don't drink a whole heck of a lot but one of the things that I've always wanted to do is spend a pleasant evening in a classy bar during the Holidays while a jazz trio is performing for the customers.
For the last article of Xmas Eve 2023, I'd like to offer the late great Kiyohiko Ozaki（尾崎紀世彦）as he gives his jazzy and soothing rendition of the classic "White Christmas". I don't know when this footage was originally filmed and I'm not even sure whether Ozaki had even recorded his version of the song on any of his albums in the past, so I'm just placing it as a 2023 number. This would be the "White Christmas" I'd like to hear in that bar.
I'm surprised that I hadn't done it earlier but here is Bing Crosby's original "White Christmas" as he sang it in the 1942 "Holiday Inn". Anyways, wherever you and whatever you are doing, I hope that all of you have a wonderfully Merry Christmas.🎄
Of course, Bing Crosby's discography is bigger than "White Christmas" although whenever his name is mentioned, that particular song will be the first to come to mind to many. I've known that he was quite the crooner many years before he and Irving Berlin's legendary Xmassong for the ages were put together, and a few of his songs managed to get onto the old LP compilation of standards that our family had (or perhaps has...just misplaced).
But his "The Day You Came Along" is a new one for me. Created by the songwriting duo of Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnson, Der Bingle introduced it in his 1933 movie "Too Much Harmony" as a song of woo for that special someone.
The reason that I'm even introducing "The Day You Came Along" here in a non-ROY capacity is that I first encountered it as a cover by singer Tokiko Kato（加藤登紀子）under the title of "Akogare no Sora" (The Sky I've Wanted). It's a track on Kato's 1983 album, "Yume no Ningyo"（夢の人魚...A Siren Dream） whose concept is all about the music that was heard between 1914 and 1939, through the Taisho and early Showa eras. The singer produced the album alongside Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, and he was also the arranger for this particular playful track, according to Tower Records.
I've known Kato as the tenderhearted folk singer behind "Shiretoko Ryojou"（知床旅情）but over the years and especially listening to some of her other songs through my old radio program "Sounds of Japan", I also know that she's more than game with other genres. Listening to her husky voice tackle Bing's old song, she sounds as if she is a natural for old-style nightclub torch singing in the European establishments. Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）was responsible for providing Kato with the Japanese lyrics for "The Day You Came Along". I really enjoy the classy but, as I said before, playful nature of this cover version.
Come to think of it, I'm going to have to do a Reminiscings of Youth for "White Christmas" although that song was more than 20 years before my appearance on Earth.
