Toshiyuki Miyama & New Herd -- Mystery Cat

Łukasz Ciesielski via Wikimedia Commons

Really cold out there. The wind chill factor was in the mid-thirties below zero Celsius this morning. Still had to get some errands done but at least, we got our scrumptious lunch at our favourite diner. My double-patty smash burger warmed me up nicely and put me to sleep just as quickly when we got home. If I'd ordered a milkshake, I would have been in a coma for several hours but I settled for multiple cups of coffee instead.

Well, I have to wake up sometime since I still have many more hours to go before I sleep properly. I'd say that the following is a good form of getting those energies up. This is "Mystery Cat", a track on a 1980 album called "Toshiyuki Miyama & New Herd Plays Chikara Ueda ~ Big Stuff" by the jazz-fusion band Toshiyuki Miyama & New Herd（宮間利之＆ニューハード）. I had never heard of these guys before but indeed they can cook on "Mystery Cat" which was originally composed by Chikara Ueda（上田力）. It sounds like something ideal for the soundtrack of a "Lupin III" movie with all of the bold brass.

I had assumed that Miyama and his crew had their origins in the 1970s just like Casiopea and The Square, but I was surprised to read on Discogs that the man had this ensemble since 1950 called Jive Ace which expanded its roster and got renamed New Herd in 1958. I don't know much about how many albums the band put out but they've been performing now for well over half a century even after Miyama's passing in 2016. 

Yoshiaki Miyanoue -- Shiny Scandal（シャイニー・スキャンダル）

 

The first time I heard Yoshiaki Miyanoue's（宮之上貴昭）"Shiny Scandal", I thought it could have made for a bright accompanying BGM for a J-Drama of that time or even an anime. Back then, productions really liked to use their orchestras, especially the string sections.

However, "Shiny Scandal" is actually from Miyanoue's 2nd album "Mellow Around" from 1980, and Miyanoue himself is a Tokyo-born jazz guitarist who started out performing for a number of years in front of the troops at Yokota Air Base back in the 1970s. He then went to the United States to hone his skills for a few years before coming back and releasing his albums which now number up to about 24 up to 2022. Miyanoue was inspired and follows the way of his hero, the late jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery. He even uses Montgomery's distinct technique of relying on the side of his thumb instead of a guitar pick to play.

"Shiny Scandal" is indeed a shiny and non-scandalous piece which comes across as being quite refined and relaxing as if Miyanoue were playing in some seashore bar with the view of that ocean and schooner seen on the cover of "Mellow Around". Of course, Miyanoue won't allow the strings to take centre stage and his playing comes to the fore. The song itself was composed and arranged by pianist Chikara Ueda（上田力）, no stranger to fusion himself.

Rie Miyazawa -- Itsuka Aeru made（いつか会える時まで）

 

Oh yes...I do remember that bus. It's the one that takes guests from the Toyoko Inn near Asakusa to Ueno Station. That was back in the autumn of 2014. We used it a fair bit as a short cut and then finally to head back to Haneda Airport.

It's kinda hard to imagine poignancy through a hotel bus but that final ride signified some wistfulness with the hoped-for reunion in the future. However, my next trip in 2017 had me staying at the R&B Hotel near Ikebukuro instead. 

Well, the above was a fairly ham-fisted segue to the song "Itsuka Aeru made" (Until We Meet Again Someday) by Rie Miyazawa（宮沢りえ）. The track comes from her June 1993 3rd album "ROSEE" and that intro reminds me a lot of Alicia Bridges' "I Love The Nightlife". In fact, I'd say that the song whose melody was concocted by Chika Ueda（上田知華）has taken a lot of inspiration from Motown soul or the various themes from "Saturday Night Live" (especially when the beefy sax has its moment). I also have to say that Miyazawa's vocals have an appealing breathy quality here. Jun Kagemori（影森潤）was responsible for the lyrics.

Yoko Maeno -- After Summertime

 

Perhaps I could have done this one about three weeks later when autumn has officially arrived. However, it's already starting to feel like summer is making its way to the finish line although the leaves have quite turned yet. 

But I digress. "After Summertime" by the late Yoko Maeno（前野曜子）is a refreshing pitcher of sangria. From her final original album "Twilight" in 1982, the song is a laidback tune on changes of all types with a bit of Latin thrown in there. It's wistful but not maudlin and has that feeling of "Tomorrow's another day". Lyrics were provided by Chikara Ueda（上田力）and the music was by Kayoko Fuyumori（冬杜花代子）.

There's another track from "Twilight" that I contributed an article about back in 2019: "Winelight".

Chikara Ueda & The Power Station -- Jojo

It was just a little over two weeks that I'd made up the ROY article for Boz Scaggs' "Lowdown", and now I've got "Jojo" on the board. As with "Lowdown", "Jojo" was another song that I was able to hear on the radio for years although since I was never a lyrics guy, I hadn't been aware that this was all about a pimp on Broadway; the title had struck me as being about a French clown on Broadway.

Even to this day, I'm still picking up information about "Jojo" which was originally a track on the smooth-singing star's "Middle Man" LP released in April 1980, according to Wikipedia. For one thing, "Jojo" was created not only by Scaggs but also by David Foster and singer-songwriter David Eldon Lasley. For another, in the recording booth, joining the singer on guitar was Ray Parker Jr., while Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro from TOTO were on lead guitar and drums respectively, and then there Foster and Lasley themselves on keyboards and backing vocals respectively. All that musical goodness rolled up in one song!

Later in September of that year, Chikara Ueda & The Power Station（上田力&パワーステーション）released "Flying Easy" and one of the tracks just happened to be an instrumental cover of "Jojo" with the horns coming into play here (I swear, though, that I've heard those series of six horn blasts in the intro on various TV programs in Japan). I miss the smooth Boz vocals but still, Ueda's take on the soulful AOR classic is worthy of merit especially with some talented guitar. Incidentally, jazz drummer and record producer Harvey Mason was on those drums for the entire album.

It was also about a year ago that I first wrote about Ueda & The Power Station through their "Twilight Shadows".

Chikara Ueda & The Power Station -- Twilight Shadows

Approximately a couple of years ago, a fellow sent me a message via the Contact Form about a song that he had heard but couldn't glean the artist or the song title. I sent out an All-Points Bulletin in May 2018 on whether anyone else was able to recognize this tune that I had thought from the vocals was something by Hitomi Tohyama（当山ひとみ）. Now, though I didn't get any nibbles and I couldn't figure out who this was, the fellow did contact me again very recently to say that he finally was able to track down title and artist thankfully.

Indeed, the above is the song of note and this is "Twilight Shadows", a track from the 1981 album "Sunlight Whisper" by Chikara Ueda & The Power Station（上田力＆パワーステーション）. It kinda straddles that line between City Pop and a strut-friendly funk from the United States, and the vocals according to a few sources such as CD Japan belong to a group called Suzie & Jada（スージー&JADA）. For a funky evening number, "Twilight Shadows" sounds pretty good for a morning walk along the dewy grass.

As for Ueda, according to his J-Wiki bio, he wore a number of hats in the music industry: pianist, composer, arranger, music critic and producer. His career started in the early 1960s but his peak seemed to have come when he rode the wave of fusion which was hitting Japan in the late 1970s. He worked with a variety of studio musicians, forming different groups such as Chikara Ueda & Caravan, The New Herd and, of course, The Power Station with whom he created 5 albums including "Sunlight Whisper".

Ueda passed away in October 2017 at the age of 91.