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.
On last week's extended "Uta Con"（うたコン）episode, enka singer and TV personality Kenichi Mikawa（美川憲一）appeared for the first time in a while. I'd wondered where he was all these months and I only found out right on the show that he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's and made an announcement back last November. Up to this point, he'd been going through some grueling rehabilitation.
Aside from what he said on the program and that he accepted his friend Sachiko Kobayashi's（小林幸子） assistance in being led to the stage and off, Mikawa didn't show his affliction too much at all which may be a good sign. He sang his classic "Sasori-za no Onna"（さそり座の女）and his vocals were just as fine as before. Then, he sang a song that I hadn't heard before called "Ikiru" which was his 101st single from May 2013.
And I ended up not hearing it. Jme and NHK made one of their not-so-smooth quick cuts which excised his performance of "Ikiru"(To Live). Why? Well, I quickly figured out that "Ikiru" was probably not a Japanese original. And as it turns out, it wasn't. But more on that later. Listening to it finally through the YouTube video above, it sounds like a chanson that has been given a pop arrangement thanks to Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）with new lyrics by Michikazu Yatabe（矢田部道一）.
"Ikiru" actually came from French singer-songwriter Alice Dona's 1981 song"Ma dernière volonté"(My Last Wish) which was written by Sylvain Lebel and composed by Dona.
Maybe Mikawa's appearances on TV or on stage will no longer be as frequent. But I hope that he will be able to get a good handle on his illness and that he will continue to have more years of peace and relative good health.
Well, that was the entrance to my building this morning after Snowmageddon 2 walloped the Greater Toronto Area all throughout yesterday. I think we may have gotten as much as two feet of snow by the end and though the main streets have been plowed, the sidewalks were still pretty treacherous (and probably will remain that way for the next few days).
It was an interesting time at the local mall this morning when I was out doing the usual grocery shopping. Just when I was ready to head for the cashier, the alarm began whooping and then we got the announcement ordering us out of the supermarket immediately. So I was out with my basket of groceries waiting for half an hour outside of the now-sealed store. Apparently, on the other end of the mall, the ceiling collapsed just within the entrance and the fire department had to come in and check the structural integrity for all of the ceiling within the mall so since I couldn't wait, I just returned my groceries to the nearest staffer and headed on home. Meanwhile, there was a three-car collision in the mall parking lot. But hey, at least it was sunny.😎
In commemoration of the second major snowstorm to hit Toronto in the last ten days, I've decided to find something suitable to begin this business week's round of KKP articles. I already spoke on storm-related songs several days ago so I was wondering how I was going to pull this off today when I remembered a lady whose first name literally stands for "blizzard": Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）.
The late chanson singer released a single that would be perfect for yesterday's sturm und drang. "Yuki ga Furu"(Snow Falls) might sound something of an understatement considering the amounts that we received but I can live with that. Released in 1963, this was a cover of Belgian singer Salvatore Adamo's own hit, "Tombe la neige", from earlier in the year. Originally composed and written by Adamo, both the Japanese version which was given lyrics by Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）and the original reflect a less stormy and more composed if resigned state of dealing with the loss of a lover...and the winter in Japan at least likes to reflect emotional devastation regarding romance. Parting can be so beautiful and horrifyingly sad.
Of course, over here in Toronto currently, it's not just the snow but the ceiling which falls.
When I hear the name Michiyo Azusa（梓みちよ）, I always think of her lasting kayo classic from 1963 "Konnichiwa Aka-chan" (こんにちは赤ちゃん）where she croons her first greetings to a cute little baby.
Fourteen years later in 1979, I don't think her audience was located in a maternity ward. In fact, I would surmise that she was probably addressing a group of jaded women in a bar or club somewhere in Shinjuku, Tokyo. What I have here is a track from her 1979 album"Onna ga Otoko wo Kataru Toki"（女が男を語るとき...When Women Talk About Men）, "Joke" and considering the titles of track and album, I don't believe that Azusa is talking about men in a particularly complimentary way.
The obi for the album states that this is Azusa singing some Neo-Chanson and it's true that through "Joke" at least, she's doing so with that Gallic panache that's so common with the French genre of music. However, I think it's also a blend of kayo kyoku and City Pop...certainly, there is that urbaneness to it, and if I can throw in a French expression, it also has some of that je ne sais quoi that makes me think of New Music in general. Furthermore, the chorus does remind me of Circus' big hit "Mr. Summertime" from the previous year. Quite the musical sangria here. Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）was behind the melody while Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）provided the lyrics.
Well, I guess I'm making my way around the spy-fi theme tunes. There's the cool theme for "Mission: Impossible" by Lalo Schifrin and then Monty Norman & John Barry's iconic theme for James Bond. Both franchises I have known since I was a kid and one other similar example of spy drama and adventure that I got to know early in life was "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."(1964-1968) with Robert Vaughan and David McCallum.
The main scene that I've always remembered is the opening when some assassin in shadow bounces out with his gun and tries to shoot down another silhouetted figure but only manages to hit a shield before the agency's best agent, Napoleon Solo, comes out of his own shadow and threateningly shows what he can do with a weapon. All this was done to a dangerous snappy snare drum and timpani combo.
Then comes the theme by Jerry Goldsmith. I knew this guy was prolific but I had no idea that he was responsible for this one and many others, along with the theme for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" years later. But to be honest, I really didn't get a bead on the "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." theme unlike the themes for 007 and "Mission: Impossible" until years later. Now that I have though, I prefer the original from the first season with the continuation of the percussion and the horn section reflecting the heroic and global organization.
Unfortunately, I don't remember much of the episodes throughout the four-season run of the series (there was one scene where Ilya fell into a vat of goop) but I read that the tone varied wildly from season to season which didn't do much for its fortunes. The first season has apparently been seen as the best one due to its straight and serious nature with succeeding seasons getting campier, and I gather that the variations on the theme also reflected this. The second season theme got jazzier in a beatnik way although the timpani returned on occasion.
The third season (and I'm assuming the final season afterwards) had a theme that just went full go-go boots and so I'm not a huge fan of that arrangement.
Some years ago, some enterprising person came up with their own fantasy opening credit sequence for an UNCLE movie starring George Clooney and Orlando Bloom which was quite well done (regrettably, it seems to have been pulled off of YouTube) and the version of the theme song was actually quite good.
Just from good luck, I managed to track it down as the first song of a medley on a compilation called "The Film Music of Jerry Goldsmith" with Goldsmith as the conductor leading the London Symphony Orchestra. Yep, as some commenters have intimated, Goldsmith was probably a better composer than a conductor here, the cues aren't too sharp, the medley at least sounds as if it had been recorded in Carlsbad Caverns, and frankly the cover of the album looks perfect as something to be found in a Wal-Mart bargain basement basket. However, I think this version is just a few rehearsals and tweaks away from being a really nice take on the UNCLE theme song thanks to the thrilling strings and percussion for a contemporary motion picture reboot.
Ah, speaking of which...the 2015 film of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." was entertaining enough with Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, but I do wish that the original theme had been brought in.
So, when the original show premiered in September 1964, what were some singles coming out in Japan at around that time?
About a week ago, I heard that veteran Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, born in New Brunswick and trained at the University of Toronto, passed away last week at the age of 88. I've known him for his huge presence, that wide-as-a-mile Cheshire Cat grin and that distinct voice which reminded me of a slow-burning crackling fire.
I remember seeing him as the youngest member of "The Dirty Dozen" and then as one of the many doomed characters on the 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Of course, in recent years, Sutherland gained a new generation of fans for his portrayal of President Snow in "The Hunger Games" franchise. Still one other cackling evil role he had that still pops up in my memories whenever the actor's name is mentioned is the one for homicidal pyromaniac Ronald Bartel in "Backdraft": child-like and axe-crazy.
One other movie that I associate Sutherland with is the original movie version of the war comedy "M*A*S*H". For years and years, I had been accustomed to watching the CBS adaptation on TV on Monday nights and then reruns with Alan Alda as the snarky surgeon Captain Hawkeye Pierce and his buddies. At the time, I'd only remembered that there had been a movie version with the famous poster of a peace sign-giving hand under an army helmet and over a couple of woman's legs.
Then, I finally got to see the 1970 movie by Robert Altman on telly one night and got to see Sutherland's original take on Hawkeye. It was a bit weird seeing not only these familiar roles such as Pierce, Trapper John, Frank Burns, Father Mulcahy and Hot Lips being played by different thespians (although always-dependable Radar O'Reilly was played by Gary Burghoff in both the movie and television show) but getting this very rough-and-ready version of the M*A*S*H 4077. If anything, Sutherland's Hawkeye was even more flippant with a sense of a slithery demeanor, and it's far better having him as your friend and not your enemy.
Though the TV show gradually changed from a sitcom with dramatic elements to a drama with comedic elements through its eleven seasons (with the cast changes, to boot), the one thing that basically stayed constant (other than a few scenes here and there) was the opening credits with the famous instrumental theme song. I would always see the choppers bringing patients into the 4077, the overhead shot of the hospital, and the doctors and nurses rushing to triage them and have them go through the best of their meatball surgery. Meanwhile, the theme song was about as far from being a brass march that one could get for a show based in the middle of the Korean War.
But then when I did watch the original movie, I was surprised to find out that the theme song actually had a title, "Suicide is Painless" and lyrics that were sung by an uncredited foursome: John Bahler, Tom Bahler, Ron Hicklin, and Ian Freebairn-Smith. With harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys and a wistful and slightly mournful melody by Johnny Mandel and Mike Altman, I realized that the theme back then was a hymn of sorts for the futility of war and the price paid in body counts, something that didn't quite translate to the weekly instrumental version in the TV series, especially when it was given the cheery arrangement during the ending credits.
Interestingly, "Suicide is Painless" was also released in Japan as a single with the title "Moshi mo, Ano Yo ni Yuketara"（もしも、あの世にゆけたら...If I Could Go to the Afterlife） in March 1970, just a couple of months following the movie's release. As for my even more personal connection to the song, our junior high school band regularly performed the song during concerts. It was getting to the point that "Suicide is Painless" was actually painful.
My condolences to Sutherland's family, friends and many fans.
Now, what had won the Best Performance prizes at the Japan Record Awards in 1970?
Supposedly, we're only a month away from the Paris Olympics, so I guess this can be considered a tribute article to the major sporting event. However what got me to write about this song wasn't the Games.
Yesterday, we got to see NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）for the first time in a couple of weeks on June 25th. Actually, the show hadn't been pre-empted on the source network on the 18th but when I saw the hosts announce on the 11th that the episode on the 18th would have a Disney theme, faster than the NHK copyright troll yelling, "No Uta Con for you!", I knew that we wouldn't be getting an episode for that week. For the past couple of years, the general rule on TV Japan and now Jme has been that Disney songs simply can't be heard via NHK.
Let me just stop the rant there, though. The theme for the show yesterday was the genre of chanson and overall French pop which has had its fans for decades now. So, of course, it was also an indirect theme for the late chanson singer Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）who had given her covers of songs such as "Sans Toi M'amie"（サン・トワ・マミー）and "Hymne A L'Amour". At first, I'd assume that I could do an article on "Les Champs-Élysées", but I had already done so all the way back in 2016.
However, I didn't give up there. Although the song hadn't been presented on "Uta Con" last night, there was the famous "La Vie en rose", the 1945 classic by Edith Piaf, and sure enough, Koshiji did cover it via her 1968 album"Chanson no Subete"（シャンソンのすべて...All Chanson） under the translated title of "Bara Iro no Jinsei" with Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）as the lyricist for the Japanese words. Considering how iconic it is as one of the representative songs of the City of Lights, I was surprised that it didn't get its due on the episode. It's a gorgeous cover with a brilliant jazz trumpet reflecting the late night of Paris. In an odd way, despite the volume, I can also treat it as a lullaby.
Glad to see that NHK's "Shin Nihon BS no Uta"（新日本BSの歌...Songs of Japanese Spirit）kayo kyoku program is returning to a more convenient hour for the first time since the new Jme regime began on April 1st. It should be coming on within an hour of this writing. Speaking of the program, I saw an old rerun of it a few weeks ago in which enka veteran Sachiko Kobayashi（小林幸子）sang this rather melancholy yet beautifully arranged kayo that I hadn't heard before.
The song's title, "Kibou"(Hope), was easy enough to remember. It seemed a bit outside of what Kobayashi usually has sung so I did assume that the original version had been sung by another singer. Sure enough, it turns out that "Kibou" had been created by composer Taku Izumi（いずみたく）and lyricist Toshio Fujita（藤田敏雄）in the late 1960s for a musical starring actress/singer Chieko Baisho（倍書千恵子）. The song seems to have had an overarching presence in the play which would have had it going for around 6 1/2 minutes so its adaptation into a single back in those days was impossible. Folk group Four Saints（フォー・セインツ）did record a 1969 single of it in the 4-minute range, though, which scored a No. 26 ranking.
However, the most acclaimed version of "Kibou" seems to have been the one by Yoko Kishi（岸洋子）when it was released in April 1970. Arranged by Makoto Kawaguchi（川口真）, the ballad here is a mix of sad kayo and chanson as Kishi sings about a woman who ends up leaving not only her town but what turned out to be the love of her life and has regretted it ever since. Whether or not she's successful, she clings onto that titular hope that she will meet her former flame and make up for lost time. The above "Big Show" performance from 1974 is stressing the more chanson elements.
The story in the lyrics aside, I think Kishi's version of the song has probably had even more meaning for her and her fans. Yes, it did score a No. 2 ranking on Oricon and ended up as the No. 12 song of the year, selling more half a million records and earning her a performance award at the Japan Record Awards at the end of 1970. At the same time, though, she'd also been hospitalized due to a serious disease and so what probably had been a sure appearance on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen had to be cancelled. The hope this time was for Kishi to recover and happily she did recover so that she was able to appear on the 1971 Kohaku which would be her final appearance on the program, after a total of seven such appearances.
The above is the folksier earlier version of "Kibou" by Four Saints.
Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth where I present some of the memorable non-kayo kyoku songs of my childhood, youth and perhaps young adulthood. This week, we're going back into the 007 file which has gotten three entries thus far and today is No.4 which involves the third entry in the franchise, the 1964 "Goldfinger".
First off, let me say that I still have a great love for the first two movies, "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love", but it's been said that with "Goldfinger", the James Bond movie formula was finally realized. The romancing and the coolness/dark humour of Bond were always there but from this movie, we finally got to see the secret gadgets, the testy exchanges between Q and Bond, and a villain that cast his dark shadow throughout the entire movie.
Plus, we got the first sung Bond song in the opening credit sequence, a nifty one with some of the scenes of what we were going to view projected onto a model painted in gold. According to the Wikipedia article for the song, the theme went through some sturm und drang among the production folks but for everyone paying for the experience, Shirley Bassey hit it out of the park and it's been the gold standard (no pun intended) for all of the Bond themes to follow.
Written and composed by John Barry, Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, the song had all of what a 007 movie needed: class, swagger, intrigue and danger. And when I finally got to see the movie on ABC (until Roger Moore's final appearance as 007, "A View to a Kill", I'd never seen a Bond flick on the big screen), I enjoyed hearing the thrilling orchestral reprise of the theme in certain key scenes. The song extended Auric's already hefty presence even further.
Once again according to the Wikipedia article, the theme managed to sell over a million records in the United States, hitting No. 8 on Billboard, and reaching the Top 10 in a number of European nations. It even hit No. 1 in Japan.
The above photo here is of the main hall inside the Tokyo International Forum, just north of Ginza. I used to walk around here fairly frequently although I never got to see a concert or a movie in the facility. Still, the visit was worth it just to marvel at the architecture inside. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do so until today, but last Tuesday's episode of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）was the final one to be held at TIF which had served as the program's Tokyo home for the past one year and change while renovations were being made to NHK's main hall in Shibuya. So, it was a pretty poignant episode with the hosts giving a fond farewell to TIF.
Well, then I thought that it would be appropriate to put up a song that was just as poignant that also had its due on that episode last week. The singer Kumiko（クミコ）has made many appearances on "Uta Con" but this is the chanson singer's first time on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Making her debut in 1982 under her real name of Kumiko Takahashi（高橋久美子）, she went with the shortened Kumiko starting from around 2000. In her early years, she had also appeared at one of the temples of chanson in Japan, Ginza's own Gin Pari（銀巴里）, a venerable chanson café that lasted almost 40 years between 1951 and 1990.
The song that she sang on the Tokyo International Forum stage last week was "Ai shika nai Toki" which is the Japanese title for the original "Quand on n'a que l'amour" (When Love is All You Have) by Belgian singer Jacques Brel in 1957. Kumiko's version came out as a single just a couple of weeks ago, although it was also the title track in a 2003 album. I figure that since the video above was put up last September that it is the 2003 take with the one below being of the recent version.
I don't know very much about the genre of chanson but I think Kumiko's cover of the song has a more "softly, softly" approach when compared to the usual proud and strident tones that I usually associate chanson with.
This week's Reminiscings of Youth article is on another song that actually came before my time, but not by much, and it was with me all throughout my childhood and adolescence.
I am talking about "The Girl From Ipanema" which was originally released in May 1964, so it's been 57 years this month that we've gotten to know about this bossa nova classic that has gone into many a music collection, an elevator, a supermarket and even a telephone on hold. I've actually written on "The Girl From Ipanema" before through Lisa Ono's（小野リサ）cover of the song, and I'll just repeat the last paragraph from that article here to give you my personal connection with it:
I guess I have a soft spot for that girl from Ipanema since the bossa ballad by Antonio Carlos Jobim was one of the first songs that I remember hearing as a toddler. As far as I know, I don't think my father had the record as part of his collection but it was a tune that I heard quite frequently on radio and TV. Years later, it was required playing during my lone year of band class back in high school although I didn't quite have the appreciation for it that I do now (playing off-tune renditions of it on an old clarinet can take the buzz off). Realizing that the song has become possibly so ubiquitous to the point of kitsch, I think if "The Girl From Ipanema" is given its due respect, it can still be that wonderfully cooling song from 1964.
One wrong assumption that I'd had about "The Girl From Ipanema" is that this was Astrud Gilberto's song alone. Of course, it wasn't. Antonio Carlos Jobim, was the composer with Vinicius de Moraes being responsible for the Portuguese lyrics while Normal Gimbel provided the English lyrics. And then, João Gilberto, the man who has been considered the father of bossa nova, sang the Portuguese part of the song with his then-wife Astrud singing the English portion and legendary saxophonist Stan Getz adding his mellow tones.
Another wrong assumption was that The Girl was merely fictional but actually "The Girl From Ipanema" was inspired by a real teenager, then known as Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, who had been living in the tony district of Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro. I can't help but make comparisons with Helen of Troy who launched a thousand ships. I guess in this case, Heloisa of Ipanema launched a million LPs.
The accolades are all there in the Wikipedia writeup on the song, but "The Girl From Ipanema" was a global hit, reaching No. 5 on both the American and Canadian charts, and it was Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards that year. According to an article in the "Wall Street Journal", it's also apparently "...the second most recorded pop song in history, after "Yesterday" by The Beatles."
But of course, as much as "The Girl From Ipanema" has become this beloved mainstay of bossa nova, it's also been the go-to example for the dreaded Muzak of elevators and shopping malls. Personally, I don't recall ever hearing the song in an elevator, store or even as a song to be played while I've been put on hold, but it's gotten plenty of exposure in such places in movies and TV shows such as "The Blues Brothers" above. Maybe the whole thing about this song and Muzak is just how soothing and harmless it is. That's cool with me, though, as the original will always remain a staple in my musical memories.
Now, as for what was happening in Japan in music during that year, Oricon didn't exist in 1964 and the site "Showa Pops" doesn't go back beyond 1965 so my usual sources won't be of any help here. However, I did find out that Hachiro Izawa's（井沢八郎）classic kayo "Ahh, Ueno Eki"（あゝ上野駅）was released in the same month as "The Girl From Ipanema".
Otherwise, there are some of the prize winners from the 6th annual Japan Record Awards from 1964.
Best Singing Performance: Yoko Kishi -- Yoake no Uta （夜明けのうた）
Taking things back in time a number of decades to 1965. Here I have some chanson in the form of Yoko Kishi's（岸洋子）"Koigokoro". I first introduced Kishi on the pages of KKP through her 1964 single, "Yoake no Uta"（夜明けのうた）and she shared the chanson stage with Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）.
Kishi's "Koigokoro" is a Japanese cover of the original 1964 "L'amour, C'est pour rien" by Algerian-French singer Enrico Macias, with Fumio Nagata（永田文夫）providing the Japanese lyrics. It's quite the intimate tango as lushly sung by Kishi, thanks to that lonely guitar although the trilling flute and the strings lighten the mood a bit. I'm thinking basement French restaurant with plenty of atmosphere here.
It's a two-for-one thing on this week's Reminiscings of Youth article and the first one for one of my favourite bands, The Manhattan Transfer. In fact, it's so much one of my favourite bands that for a person like me who doesn't really attend concerts, I actually paid out the yen to get the ticket to see them with my own eyes at The Blue Note in Tokyo, some time in the last few years of my life in Japan.
It was a packed house and as has been the case with a number of other acts over the decades such as The Ventures and Carpenters, The Manhattan Transfer has been a beloved musical guest in Japan. I've known about Tim Hauser, Alan Paul, Laurel Masse (to be replaced by Cheryl Bentyne), and Janis Siegel since I was an elementary school student, and to see Hauser, Paul, Masse and Bentyne a mere four or five metres away from me on the stage at last performing their biggest and most recognizable hits was a singular thrill. I remember one middle-aged fan even closer in front jumping to her feet as either Siegel or Bentyne sang right to her face. Hygiene issues aside, I'm sure that the fan's life was fulfilled. For me, it was also poignant because Hauser would pass away a few years later at the age of 72.
Although I did pick up their "Bodies & Souls" album from 1983 when I was in university, I really didn't go onto the purchasing binge for their discography until my time in Japan. I was in my jazz phase then so being a regular at the various CD stores, I started snatching up a number of their early albums including the two BEST compilations that you see at the top and bottom. The wonderful thing about The Transfer was their ability to tackle not only vocalese jazz, but also urban contemporary, Latin and doo-wop (and others). Their vocal stylings were truly magnificent instruments on their own and although a lot of their songs were covers of earlier numbers, they really made them their own.
One such example is "Tuxedo Junction" (Buddy Feyne, Erskine Hawkins, Bill Johnson, and Julian Dash) which was originally recorded in 1939 by legendary trombonist and band leader Glenn Miller. However, the first version that I heard was by The Manhattan Transfer for their self-titled 2nd album from April 1975. I'm always going to enjoy that intro with Hauser, Masse, Siegel and Paul (oo-pah, oo-PAH...I think), and the collaboration of those joyous harmonies and the boogie-woogie horns helped me decide that this Tuxedo Junction was truly the happening place in Birmingham, Alabama where folks got together in their finest clothing for a magical night of dance and music.
I very vaguely recall that The Transfer did have a TV show as a summer fill-in which turned out to be in 1975. Perhaps it can be said that Sunday nights on the network back then were indeed the televised Tuxedo Junction. I've known that "Birdland", another landmark song by the quartet, has been considered to be their theme song, but I have to admit that I enjoy "Tuxedo Junction" better as the song by them so it was nice to read on the article for the song itself that it was indeed the theme for them.
I definitely remember the first time that I heard "Chanson D'Amour" which was a track (and a 1977 single) on The Manhattan Transfer's 3rd album"Coming Out" from August 1976. When I was in junior high school, my friends and I were picked up from the school one Friday afternoon by my friend's father. As we were waiting for the last guy to come in, "Chanson D'Amour" was playing on the car radio and along with the Edith Piaf imitation by Siegel, there was the catchy "ra da da da da" chorus to insinuate it deep into my musical memories.
Reading about "Chanson D'Amour" on Wikipedia, I discovered that The Transfer's take on the song was a cover of the 1958 original created by American songwriter Wayne Shanklin and recorded by the husband-and-wife singing duo, Art and Dotty Todd.
As with a lot of the other singers and bands covered in ROY articles, The Manhattan Transfer will get some more of their songs covered here in the months to come. But of course, we have to find out what was being released in Japan when "Tuxedo Junction" and "Chanson D'Amour" made their presence known Stateside.
Well, in April 1975 (although once again, J-Wiki reports that it was March) it was:
This is a rare ROY article on a Monday but seeing that I not only got my quota two articles published earlier this afternoon but I have a bit of extra time tonight, I decided why the heck not. Plus, it was something that I did want to get out onto the blog in fairly short order. You might consider this a follow-up of sorts from the April 8th Reminiscings of Youth article that I did on Earth Wind & Fire's classic "After the Love Has Gone" since the first time I heard the ballad was through the American sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati".
"WKRP in Cincinnati", from what I remember as a pre-pubescent kid, was a sitcom that despite its four seasons on the air (1978-1982) never really got the fame or respect that it deserved from the originating network, CBS, for whatever reason. It had funny scenes (including the famous turkey drop scene in the video above), a number of flawed but likeable characters, and being a show based around a radio station, there were some great pop songs played (although legal wrangles apparently stifled at least some of them from being brought back on the DVDs).
One of the other things that I liked about "WKRP" was the theme song. Although I wouldn't realize my love for AOR, soft rock or yacht rock or however people want to describe the genre for some years down the line, the opening theme song remains one of my favourite themes for any of the TV programs that I used to watch. Composer Tom Wells and the lyricist who just happened to be the creator behind "WKRP in Cincinnati" itself, Hugh Wilson, knew what went into a typical harmony-laden radio identification jingle and extended it into a pleasant late 1970s soft rock number with all of the prime instrumental ingredients.
The thing about the vocals was the source of an urban legend that I remember well. One of the actors, Richard Sanders, who played the nebbishy and slightly deranged news reporter Les Nessman, was once assumed to have sung the theme since his voice sounded remarkably similar to the actual singer Steve Carlisle. Apparently, Wilson finally put the legend to rest in a commentary for the DVD set for the first season. But wouldn't it have been something if the nerdy Nessman actually had those smooth and velvety vocals?
Anyways, according to the Wikipedia article for the show, in an example of life imitating art, the theme song actually scored No. 65 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 1981 and then No. 29 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1982 when it was released as a 45' single all the way back in 1979.
So, what got released in September 1978 when "WKRP in Cincinnati" first burst onto the air? Well, two of the three singles supposedly came out in August according to what I had written for them in their own articles but they have shown up for September in "Showa Pops". I think that this will probably be something that will happen now and then, and personally I'm cool with it.
Wow! The things that I learn about someone. Remi Hirano（平野レミ）has been a lady that I've seen from time to time on Japanese TV whipping up all sorts of stuff in the kitchen. She's so chatty and vivacious that I had assumed that she just has to be from Osaka when actually she was born in Tokyo and raised in Chiba Prefecture.
The other amazing thing that I've learned about her is that she has been a trained singer in the genre of chanson since 1970! Indeed, this gabby TV chef was also singing of l'amour all these years. I guess then that Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）isn't the only chanson singer up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus".
In 1988, after years of releasing singles, Hirano released her first album titled "Kikasete yo ~ Chanson de Remi"（きかせてよ - シャンソン・ド・レミ...Speak to Me） and the opening track just happens to be a cover of the original 1930 love song by Jean Lenoir,"Parlez-moi d'amour" (Speak to Me of Love). The Japanese lyrics have been provided by 70s/80s music ranking show "The Best 10"（ザ・ベストテン）emcee and author Tetsuko Kuroyanagi（黒柳徹子）. It's hard to believe that this lady who sounds like one of my dear departed aunts from the Kansai area can sing so sweetly.
Some more trivia about her family tree has come into my head. According to her Wikipedia entry, Hirano is actually one-quarter American thanks to her paternal grandfather who was lawyer and Japanologist Henry Pike Bowie. Her father was French writer Imao Hirano（平野威馬雄）, her husband was illustrator Makoto Wada（和田誠）and on top of that, her eldest son is Sho Wada（和田唱）of the rock band Triceratops whose wife is actress Juri Ueno（上野樹里）. Another daughter-in-law is the model Asuka Wada（和田明日香）.
As I mentioned yesterday, I'm supposed to be having a talk on "Tokyo House Party" this coming Saturday night about kayo kyoku in the last years of the Showa Era, particularly the Bubble Era. However, thinking about what I'm to prattle on about on the 27th, I keep pondering that I will likely have to explain what kayo kyoku is first.
When I first started "Kayo Kyoku Plus" in January 2012, my feeling was that kayo kyoku consisted of songs created during the Showa Era (December 25 1926 - January 7 1989), and I think that still holds true, generally speaking. But over the years, I've come to realize that there is that category of song within the world of kayo kyoku that can't be placed within enka or Mood Kayo (the previous two rose in the postwar years) or jazz for that matter. Perhaps I can call such tunes jun-kayo or pure Japanese pop songs. And especially in the years before World War II, even though instruments in jazz were used to record these particular numbers, maybe the jun-kayo back then were more akin to the sweet music that was played against jazz. According to one book on the history of jazz that I've read a couple of times, sweet music was more the type of orchestral stuff that was played at those polite afternoon tea parties or classy soirees since jazz at that time was often treated as the devil's music.
I think when it comes to jun-kayo, I will be more than happy to introduce one of the most famous examples and that would be "Ue wo Muite Arukou" (上を向いて歩こう) from 1961. However, although I don't own this particular 45" myself, I can also say that this ballad "Wakare no Blues"(Breakup Blues) from 1937 applies. I certainly wouldn't ever call it an enka and if the original singer, the late chanson pioneer Noriko Awaya（淡谷のり子）, were to ever hear me from the other realm use that genre term to describe it as such, she would probably hex me harder than Wanda Maximoff into the 22nd century (Awaya was definitely no fan of enka).
A song of longing and loss in romance, the lyrics by Ko Fujiura（藤浦洸）tell of a woman looking out over a harbour as the sailors get moving onto their ships and their ships get moving onto their next destination overseas. One of those sailors used to be her paramour. From what I've read on the making of "Wakare no Blues" in J-Wiki, the setting that was the model for the song was the Bund Hotel in Yokohama although I'm not sure whether the rooms actually had a good view of Yokohama Bay. Initially from reading Fujiura's lyric of "...an American harbour light...", I'd wondered whether the setting was San Francisco, but perhaps the American part was a name attached to that certain wharf.
The music was created by Ryoichi Hattori（服部良一）, the man who launched generations of music makers, and although "Wakare no Blues" isn't the first kayo with a title that has "Blues" in it (that honour belongs to "Sweet Home Blues" recorded in 1935 by Helen Yukiko Honda), the song is seen to be the first one that helped popularize Japanese blues. However, according to "Hattori Ryoichi no Ongaku Tengoku"（服部良一の音楽天国...Ryoichi Hattori's Music Heaven） via J-Wiki, even though "Wakare no Blues" has that bluesy mood, it doesn't utilize any of the blues chords. Instead, it is more influenced by chanson and kayo stylings, so it doesn't resemble anything that would be heard in American blues. Perhaps it can be said though that Hattori was indeed the pioneer for those Japanese blues kayo that has gone on through the decades with songs such as Mina Aoe's（青江三奈）"Isezakicho Blues"（伊勢崎町ブルース）.
Another interesting thing about "Wakare no Blues" is that there had been some consternation among Awaya, Hattori and the others involved in the production about how it would be sung. Awaya had been known as one of those truly talented sopranos but the desire was that "Wakare no Blues" ought to be sung lower. In the end, the singer decided to spend a night smoking up a storm (she'd never smoked cigarettes before then) and then heading into the recording without a wink of sleep to get that certain gravitas-laden voice. Talk about suffering for one's art.
"Wakare no Blues" was covered by some more of the greats over the decades such as Naomi Chiaki（ちあきなおみ）and Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）.
The late Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone was reportedly a huge fan of French culture, and not to say that he personally started the love for all things Gallic, but my observation was that the Japanese have had a long interest for French cuisine and culture. Chanson has been a small but popular genre in Japanese music. I myself have enjoyed the bread, desserts...fries.
I gather that the fun and eclectic sister act of Charan-Po-Rantan（チャランポランタン）also fell for the charms of The Republic. In their first major debut single"Wasurekaketa Monogatari"（忘れかけてた物語...A Story That I've Started to Forget） released in July 2014, one of the tracks is "France Kabure" (Crazy About France), a bouncy little ditty driven by what sounds like a talented street-side band of accordion, trumpet and other instruments while vocalist Momo（もも）sings insouciantly about enjoying the French life (reading her Prévert and listening to her Piaf) while surrounded by Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. I wouldn't be surprised if she did drop into a Vie de France or some other non-franchise patisserie nearby for some tasty pastries.
Momo's older sister, accordionist and partner in Charan-Po-Rantan, Koharu（小春）, wrote and composed this coupling song. "Wasurekaketa Monogatari" did fairly well on the charts, hitting No. 26 on Oricon. Nice video by the way of that very area I was talking about in the previous paragraph.
Ah...l'amour. The delicious pain of love and all that mumbo-jumbo. I was never good at expressing romance in writing but the French seem to do it very well. To me, Paris hasn't just been the City of Lights but also the City of Love through the various examples of pop culture that I've witnessed over the past half-century. On the other hand, Japanese society has never struck me as being all that particularly openly affectionate. In fact, I read one news report years ago where a crotchety old man supposedly smacked a young couple with his cane, maybe in Shibuya, and gave a sound reprimand to them for kissing in public.
For years, I've heard about the very amiable friendship between Japan and France, and perhaps I can only speak from the Japanese side of things, but I speculate that French movies and music (among other aspects), including the genre of chanson, became cherished parts within the Japanese fandom because of that envied openness and elegance in the expression of love. If there are any French viewers of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I could welcome some insights.
Anyways, my preamble (or pre-ramble) here exists because I wanted to introduce the 50th single by Mari Sono（園まり）, "Nagasarete" (Swept Away) which was released in August 1978. Now, Sono has been known to me primarily for her 1960s kayo songs such as "Aitakute, Aitakute"（逢いたくて逢いたくて）, but "Nagasarete" impressed me as a totally different tune for her. It's definitely not the usual kayo and seems to take listeners all the way to France as a witness to a very ardent romance as a couple get swept away into the whirlwind of love. Even the melody feels like a very gusty breeze.
It then doesn't surprise me that "Nagasarete" was composed by singer-songwriter Mieko Nishijima（西島三重子）and written by Kenji Kadoya（門谷憲二）. Nishijima is someone that I've known as weaving these oft-soaring tunes with an exotic feeling that though they never quite hit the heights of Oricon but have always embedded themselves into my own kokoro (awwww....) since the 1980s. Moreover, both she and Kadoya created one of my favourite kayo, the hauntingly lovely "Kamome yori Shiroi Kokoro de"（かもめより白い心で）.
In any case, I've also classified (initially) "Nagasarete" as a chanson just purely on how the song feels to me, although again I'm open to any fans of the genre and/or French readers of KKP agreeing or disagreeing. Mind you, I've just come across the Wikipedia article on "Nouvelle Chanson" which states that there has been considerable debate on what would be considered chanson or who belongs in the genre.
As I said in one of my articles from yesterday, I was blessed with a large number of kayo singles and albums from my friend Steve in Manhattan through a large package since he wanted to unload his record collection before moving out West. One of the 45s I saw among the records is a Japanese chanson classic, "Sans Toi M'amie" by the Queen of Chanson in Japan, the late Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）.
But before I come to her, "Sans Toi M'amie" (Without You, My Love) was originally created and recorded by Belgium's Salvatore Adamo, a singer that I have already profiled in this blog through his other hit "Tombe La Neige", known in Japanese as "Yuki ga Furu"（雪が降る）. Adamo was only 19 when he sang "Sans Toi M'amie" for the first time in 1962.
A couple of years later in June 1964, Koshiji released her version of "Sans Toi M'amie", and it is the version that I know the best. In fact, I was surprised that I hadn't yet covered it in "Kayo Kyoku Plus". It's one of Koshiji's trademark hits along with "Ai no Sanka"（愛の讃歌）and although it has that hint of grandness that I've come to associate with chanson, the song is somewhat tempered by a certain lightness in the arrangement as if the singer is asking listeners not to take things so seriously. There is that feeling of a boozy waltz, thanks to the laidback instrumental accompaniment, and yeah, I think it can be danced to.
Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）provided the Japanese lyrics to "Sans Toi M'amie". Koshiji herself was invited onto the Kohaku Utagassen of 1964 to perform it.
However, "Sans Toi M'amie" was not left behind as a relic of the music of the 1960s. It has been covered by a number of other artists with their own musical imprint. The band RC Succession gave the song its own rocking beat in their covers album, obviously titled "COVERS" which came out in August 1988. It hit No. 1 and went Gold.
I also like freshly-graduated Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）member Maki Goto's（後藤真希）take on "Sans Toi M'amie" with its relaxing pop sound that has an echo from the past. This was her 5th single from December 2002, and I think it's because I didn't follow her solo career all that doggedly that her more mature delivery stood out all the more to me. Her version peaked at No. 6. It was also a track on Goto's special album for a soundtrack from a musical that she starred in, "Ken & Mary no Meriken-ko On Stage!"（けん&メリーのメリケン粉オンステージ!...Ken & Mary's Wheat Flour On Stage!）from March 2003. It went as high as No. 59 on the album charts.
For me, Megumi Satsu（薩めぐみ）was quite the iconoclast. Although she started out as a regular kayo singer in the late 1960s, she transformed into not only a chanson singer but also into this chanteuse that couldn't be readily categorized. I bring you "Give Back My Soul" which was released in 1986 as an illustration.
If Sally Bowles from the famed musical "Cabaret" had been born Japanese decades ago and become a chanson singer before getting jaded over the years but still continuing her career, I think she would have been somewhat like Satsu as she is in this video. It isn't totally chanson despite the heavy French accent but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi avant-garde nature along with New Wave (especially that intro) thrown in, to boot. And as for the video, it would be something that I would have seen on an episode of "City Limits", that local 1980s late-night video program featuring some of the more intriguing and artsy creations.
The lyrics certainly aren't anything light and comforting. Satsu's protagonist is traumatized and lamenting her lot in life after suffering rape. Although "Give Back My Soul" has that sort of weird airiness that could leave the words up to any sort of interpretation, I think in this case, the situation is literal.
First off, for all those folks like Noelle and myself who watch NHK's "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）regularly, I have to announce as of April (which is the time when a lot of things do a reset in Japan), the title of the show will be changing to "Uta Con"（うたコン）. Nope, this isn't an early April Fool's joke (by me, at least); it is listed at its website. I'm assuming that it refers to "Uta Concert" (Song Concert) although the trendy abbreviation of the title scares me a bit. And I hope that it is only the title that is changing.
OK, getting back to the main point of this article, last night's edition of "Kayo Concert" had the bipolar theme of traditional Japanese music and Western music with Japanese lyrics. The gimmick worked for the most part although sometimes the sudden swing in tone between West and East was sometimes jarring. One of the songs on the Western side of things was an old chestnut titled "Aux Champs-Élysées" that I had heard a number of times sung here and there over the years whether it was on shows like "Kayo Concert" or even on TV ads. With the Japanese lyrics and the Japanese ability to adapt overseas melodies as one of their own, I had naturally assumed for years and years that this French-sounding ditty was an original clever kayo.
Well, my world view when it comes to "Aux Champs-Élysées" has been shattered. Not only was it not originally Japanese, it wasn't even French to begin with. In fact, it came over from the other side of the English Channel. There were neither croissants nor café au lait involved here...more like bubble and squeak. The original melody by Michael Wilshaw (whose name was shown on the screen last night when ex-Takarazuka Troupe member Risa Junna（純名里沙）sang her version on "Kayo Concert") was for the song "Waterloo Road" by British rock band Jason Crest in 1968. Michael Antony Deighan provided the lyrics for a song that sounded like good ol' Beatles tune for heaven's sake.
However in the next year, French singer Joe Dassin was able to give his own version of the song under "Les Champs-Élysées", thanks to lyricist Pierre Delanoe adapting the words to reflect one of the most famous streets on the planet. I'm not sure how "Waterloo Road" did on the UK charts but "Les Champs-Élysées" went to No. 1 for 2 weeks in France.
And then in 1971, the song didn't just hop a channel but an entire continent when it arrived in Japan. Moroccan-born Danièle Vidal had been scouted by the legendary Charles Aznavour and groomed to become a singer debuting at the age of 17 with "Aime ceux qui t'aiment" which also found popularity in Japan under the title of "Tenshi no Rakugaki"（天使のらくがき...An Angel's Grafitti）in 1969. It wasn't soon long after that Vidal started making long stays over there. In July 1971, her French-language cover of "Les Champs-Élysées" was released which got as high as No. 78 on Oricon with her own Japanese-language version under the slightly modified title of "Aux Champs-Élysées" coming out a couple of months later. My image of the song was always that it has been one sung by a woman, and perhaps it was indeed the Vidal version that I kept hearing. Her connection in Japan deepened when she married a member of a Group Sounds band, Isao Shibata（柴田功）of Chaco & Hell's Angel（チャコ&ヘルスエンジェル）in 1980 and gave birth to a son. However, the couple divorced and currently Vidal is living in France as a co-owner of a restaurant.
"Aux Champs-Élysées" now seems to be the Japanese theme song for any vacation in the City of Lights. Of course, perpetuating that image has been the number of covers of the song. The late chanson singer Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）gave a great version with a New Orleans jazzy twist. I'm actually torn between this one and the version by Vidal. The lyrics were written by Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）.
The Peanuts got in on the act as well with their take on "Aux Champs-Élysées" which also sounds a bit Beatle-y with that fuzzy guitar in there but starts out like some sort of kayo march.
All this background on this adopted kayo reminds me of another tune originally from points beyond Japan.
