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.
I can say that the above looks just like the first telephone that I ever saw in my apartment in the late 1960s. The good ol' rotary phone. Never got to use the even older model where people had to crank it up and yell "Maisie! Is that you? I'm calling Pennsylvania 65000!".
Earlier today, the first article for Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP was Mariko Tone's（刀根麻里子）"Private Number" and that got me thinking that among the many different themes I've had for Author's Picks, one common object that I had yet to highlight was the telephone. And yet, as soon as I put up "Private Number", suddenly all these phone-themed tunes came back to mind. So, to finish my contributions today, I'm putting up my telephone or denwa songs. Not all of them are City Pop, mind you, but enough of them are including the one with City Pop's most famous number.
First off, thanks go to The history man on YouTube for providing this video on the life and career of kayo kyoku songwriting legend Yu Aku (1937-2007) who apparently remains the 2nd-most prolific lyricist in Japan following Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）. Yesterday, the return of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）after the Olympic break was a big one for all of the kayo fans since a good chunk of the program was a tribute to the works of Aku who would have been 89 back on February 7th..
This isn't an Author's Picks because I wasn't the one who came up with these songs for performance on the show last night. Of course, it was the NHK producers who did that but I still wanted to acknowledge the Aku songs that had been sung on the Shibuya stage since they have remained part of the bread and butter that make up a lot of this blog. You can also take a look at a Creator article that I wrote up back in 2015 regarding Aku and his constitution on writing those lyrics.
We're not too far away from the third anniversary of the passing of Olivia Newton-John who left this mortal coil in August 2022. It's hard for me to think of her as anyone else other than that pretty young blonde woman with the softest vocals imaginable, although she died at the age of 73.
For a lot of her file under Reminiscings of Youth, I've covered her discography going from the 1970s into the 1980s when she was tackling pop and dance music such as "Physical". And yet, my earliest memories of her go to the pink SONY radio when she was releasing the softer ballads and country music from the early 1970s. One of her most memorable songs from that period was "I Honestly Love You" which was released in August 1974, and created by Jeff Barry and Peter Allen.
I guarantee if they had played this ballad at her funeral, there probably wasn't a single dry eye in the place. It is one of the most tenderhearted love songs that I ever heard and if I did listen to this one on the day that the media announced her death, I probably wouldn't have been too dry-eyed either. As I recall, this got plenty of airplay, and not surprisingly, "I Honestly Love You" was a huge hit around the planet, hitting No. 1 in both America and Canada among other places. It also won Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female at the 1975 Grammys.
Couldn't find an exact date for the release of "I Honestly Love You" aside from that month of August in 1974 so why not go with what was part of the Top 10 on Oricon on August 5ththat year? I've got Nos. 1, 5 and 8.
It didn't look good about a couple of weeks ago when I learned on the news that Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot had cancelled a round of concerts with recent video of him looking pretty haggard. Unfortunately, what I had been wondering about did come to pass yesterday as the bulletin appeared that Lightfoot passed away at the age of 84.
Tributes have been pouring in from people such as fellow Canadian singer Bryan Adams to Hollywood actor Ben Stiller. With his many songs talking of his home nation and that distinct crème caramel voice of his, Lightfoot was the personification of musical Canadiana in the same way that enka legend Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）has been a musical symbol of Japonica. His voice was a very familiar one on radio when I was growing up.
One of my bright memories of Lightfoot didn't even involve him directly. Another Canadian legend, the comedy-variety series "SCTV", did a parody via the sale of a "Gordon Lightfoot Sings Every Song Ever Written" compilation. Comedian Rick Moranis ("Ghostbusters", "Honey I Shrunk the Kids") did a brilliant impersonation of him singing a whole ton of songs that of course one wouldn't expect of him.
Yet, I didn't find it funny. And that's not trying to criticize Moranis and the writers of the piece since I am the biggest fan of "SCTV". I know what they were trying to do. It's just that Lightfoot could sing any song in that inimitable folksy way of his that it could be taken respectfully...even "Seventy-Six Trombones".
There have been and probably will be all sorts of people ranging from music critics to the average Canadian walking on the street who will be asked about their favourite Lightfoot song. Many of them will most likely answer with "If You Could Read My Mind" from 1970. However, the one that I've remembered from radio all these years is "Sundown" from March 1974. The goodtime melody always tugged at my ears and never quite let go so it was with some surprise that I found out that the lyrics relating seething jealousy may have been inspired by his own tempestuous relationship with mistress Cathy Smith, someone who had her own tales of infamy.
"Sundown" reached No. 1 on both the American Billboard and Canadian RPM charts, and it would end the year in Canada as the No. 3 hit. My condolences to Lightfoot's family, friends and fans.
There were a couple of notable kayo that were released in March 1974.
On this week's Reminiscings of Youth, I introduce a singer-songwriter who has been called one of the world's very best and the first Canadian artist to be given the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song last week. Joni Mitchell has her own entry on "TV Tropes" in which a who's who of musicians and singers is listed in terms of who she has influenced over the decades including Herbie Hancock, Annie Lennox and Bjork. I'd also like to add that Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）has been one of her admirers, and perhaps that can be heard through her first solo album"Grey Skies" from 1976.
As has been many a case for the folks featured on ROY, Mitchell was also a regular presence on the radio here in Toronto. One of her songs that I often heard was "Help Me", her single from March 1974. Now of course back in the day, I only recognized the song from her introductory wail "HELP ME!" and the beatnik sort of jazz I heard in the arrangements. I now realize that it was during that particular part of the 1970s that Mitchell was showing some interest in incorporating some of that jazz and jazz fusion into her music.
"Help Me" has been described as a song about truly helplessly falling in love although the target of the lady's affections is somewhat of a roguish cad. For me though, now that I'm listening to it again many years later, I hear it as a nostalgic song of the city in more innocent times; it could be New York City (although I admit that NYC was far from innocent back then), Toronto or even Tokyo. Although I've only visited the Big Apple twice, I can't help but feel that it's the ideal setting for something like "Help Me" as someone like Joni would be striding down the street, managing to avoid crashing into the other pedestrians as she tries to reconcile the feelings for this fellow. I guess it could be the jazziness pushed through by the bossiness of the saxophone, and I've often put New York City and downtown jazz in the same equation.
On America's Billboard chart, "Help Me" scored a No. 7 so that it became Mitchell's highest-ranking hit, while in her native Canada, it went a notch higher to No. 6. The jazz fusion ensemble L.A. Express backed her up in the recording room. "Help Me" was also a track on her 1974 album"Court and Spark".
So, what else was being released in the same month as "Help Me"?
Ahhh...there's nothing like a trailer for an upcoming blockbuster to bring back an old pop chestnut. Yup, "Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania" is due to come out next month and I'm predicting that not all of the Pym-Lang clan are going to come out alive. I'm just hoping that Phase 5 is off to a better start than what Phase 4 brought...I was a bit disappointed last year.
In any case, I ought to get to this week's Reminiscings of Youth and it is this song that was winding through the trailer. I've known Elton John's September 1973 (when it was released in the UK) masterpiece "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" since I was a kid with the family radio but back then, I hadn't been paying attention to the lyrics but to the music and especially the famous chorus that I've pathetically tried to emulate in text above to start things off.
Elton John even managed to infiltrate my thick head at the time since he was so over-the-top in his fashion, including his glasses, whenever I saw him on telly, but it would be a while before I connected him and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road". I didn't even know the title for the song for several years. Of course, I was scratching my head at why this elegant ballad was making this reference to "The Wizard of Oz", the Judy Garland fantasy that we traditionally watched on Saturday nights on CBS whenever a major holiday was upon us. Eventually, I realized that the John-Taupin creation was all about remembering and reappreciating where one came from. It's something that I've gotten to understand in the last few years, too.
"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" hit No. 1 on Canada's RPM Top Single charts while it reached No. 2 in the United States. The song is a good choice for the "Quantumania" trailer as the Pyms and the Langs enter a microversal Oz not by choice and try to get home.
If I'm not mistaken, the National Football League is almost done with its preseason play and should be getting ready for another rousing season. Although my favourite team sport will always be ice hockey, I also enjoy football especially because of some of these gems shown above and the sportscasters' reactions to them.
from YouTube
Somehow, looking at the boys on the cover of this record single, I don't really think that Tom Brady has much to be intimidated about. And in a nation where American-style football has some but not overwhelming interest, I kinda wondered why songwriters Shunichi Tokura and Yu Aku（都倉俊一・阿久悠）came up with a 1970s kayorevolving around this particular sport. But that's the magic of music!
Regardless, "Koi no American Football" (American Football of Love) was Finger Five's（フィンガーファイブ）5th single from June 1974. With a melodic arrangement reminiscent of 1960s summertime pop, the Tamamoto Brothers and Sister from Okinawa sing about the big game on the gridiron where one player has been promised one big kiss if the team can win it all. I never followed the legend, but I'm fairly sure that Vince Lombardi didn't ever inspire his teams that way.
"Koi no American Football" tackled a No. 4 ranking on Oricon and it won Finger Five a Young Idol Prize at the Japan Record Awards that year. Enjoy your season!
The above is a whole string of openings for the various Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news programs that have been broadcast over the past few decades. But unfortunately much to my disappointment, the one opening that I've been seeking is not among them, and I'm not quite sure why. The program that I'm talking about is "24 Hours" which was the 6 pm news on CBC Toronto when it used to be known as CBLT, and it had its run in the 1970s when I was about to enter prepubescence.
Now, why am I going ga-ga on an ancient opening sequence for a news show? Well, it isn't so much the sequence itself (although the bird's-eye view of skimming over Lake Ontario toward the Toronto shore at sunset was pretty impressive) but the song that accompanied it.
"Love's Theme" by The Love Unlimited Orchestra was indeed that theme. I was obviously just a kid back then but looking back on it now, I think "Wow! That was one kickass choice for a theme song for a nightly news show!". You had those dramatic strings, the wacka-wacka electric guitar and the epic French horns mixed into a tune that has been classified as proto-disco on the relevant article at Wikipedia. In fact, the way it's been described, "Love's Theme", which was released in November 1973, seems to come off as one of the parents of disco itself, so feel free to praise or condemn the song as you wish depending on your musical preferences.
From that same Wiki article, I found out that The Love Unlimited Orchestra was a 40-piece string group led by the late singer-songwriter Barry White created to back up him and his vocal trio Love Unlimited. "Love's Theme" was their debut single which hit No. 1 on both the American Billboard and Canadian RPM charts, and by the end of 1974, it would finish the year as the 25th-ranked single in the Great White North and as the No. 3 singleStateside.
Along with being the theme for "24 Hours", I also remember the song being used as the background music for ABC's weekend golf broadcasts. I'm sure that "Love's Theme" would have been quite soothing for any of the players who had gone through a bad spate of bogeys but then again they probably wouldn't have been able to hear it. I've read that the airline Cathay Pacific has also used it in their commercials.
In 1973, a number of Japanese acts were making their debuts with a rash of singles. Let's see who some of them were and what they were releasing to the public at around the time of "Love's Theme".
Lovely cool day....airing out my room by having the windows open. I'm sure a lot of other folks are out there on the beginning of this long Victoria Day weekend. May be catching "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2" on Monday with a couple of friends. The reviews have been good although it doesn't seem to be as well-regarded as the first one but not too surprised on that assessment. Nope, the big shocker is hearing all of the pre-release raves for "Wonder Woman". The DC Expanded Universe has been praying that one of its movies would finally get a break, and it looks like it has arrived.
Finger Five（フィンガー5）had always struck me as being the Japanese analogy of The Jackson Five, and for some reason this new song that hit upon my ears and brain thrust that point home especially. "Kojin Jugyō" (Private Lessons), mind you, is more cute pop than R&B but otherwise the sentiment was there.
Released in August 1973 as Finger Five's 2nd single (there were 3 singles in 1970 under their old name of Baby Brothers), "Kojin Jugyō" was created by the same duo behind all those later Pink Lady hits, Yu Aku and Shunichi Tokura（阿久悠・都倉俊一）. The story behind the song is very simple: a kid's puppy love for his tutor. The song hit No. 1 on Oricon and became a long-lasting single, becoming the 18th-ranked song for the year and hanging on at No. 27 in the annual rankings for 1974.
Quite the interesting development here. Near the end of 1973, a very young Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）saw her 2nd album, "Aoi Kajitsu/Kinjirareta Asobi"（青い果実/禁じられた遊び）released with one of the tracks being a cover of "Kojin Jugyō". Considering all of the deep-voiced hits that she provided in the latter half of the decade, it was fascinating to hear her sound just like Finger Five lead vocalist Kazuo Tamamoto（玉元一夫）. The album itself managed to reach as high as No. 26.
Let's jump ahead by a few decades into the 21st century. Once again, I was given a bit of a jolt in finding out that comely Kaori Mochida（持田香織）of 90s pop/rock unit Every Little Thing and Takao Tajima（田島貴男）of Original Love got together in 2009 to make the duo Caocao to do their own cover of "Kojin Jugyō". The music video has them going all 70s groovy in front of a rapturous high school crowd. One of my students who was a huge fan of all things hippie and Haight-Ashbury could appreciate this. The cover also got some appreciation from other folks as well since it ranked in at No. 22 on the singles charts.
I knew that misono that, along with the fact that she is Kumi Koda's（倖田來未）younger sister, she also sang herself. However, I mostly saw her as a tarento popping up on TV game shows and other variety programs. In 2006, though, she sang her own version of "Kojin Jugyō" as her 2nd single. It's got an even more rock treatment and the video is pretty clever as she poses as a Cinderella in a high school. It ranked in at No. 15.
I mentioned about Finger Five, that kiddie singing group, when I wrote about "Gakuen Tengoku"（学園天国）all those months ago. And I only found out a few minutes ago, but I didn't even give them their own label on the side there, although they were the original singers of the song with Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子） covering it years later.
To rectify that oversight and to give them a bit more of their due than I did for "Gakuen Tengoku", allow me a little background on them. The Tamamoto Brothers（玉元） from Okinawa started their singing lives as All Brothers in 1967; at that time, it was just the three siblings of Kazuo（一夫）, Mitsuo（光男） and Masao（正男）. I mentioned in the other article that they reminded me a bit of The Osmond Brothers from the United States whose littlest brother Jimmy had his own brief success in Japan as well. Well, according to the Wikipedia article, they would do covers of The Jackson 5 and also had some inspiration from The Partridge Family, although that was a TV-invented group. The three brothers decided to strike it big in Tokyo and signed up with King Records in 1970; they would change their name to The Baby Brothers. However, their three singles with King didn't sell well, so they did a bit of a reboot by recruiting their brother, Akira（晃）, and little sister, Taeko（妙子）, and then switching over to Philips in 1972. Of course, there was that final name change to Finger Five.
The reboot worked and the records started selling like hotcakes. Their 2nd single with the new label proved to be their first big hit, "Kojin Jugyo"（個人授業...Private Lessons）which sold over 1.4 million records when it was released in August 1973. But their biggest success came later in December of that year with "Koi no Dial 6700"(Love Call 6700) with that old-style phone, Taeko giving the cute response of "Hello, darling" and the boys launching their "Ring, ring, ring..." becoming one of the more recognizable intros of a kayo kyoku.
From that video above, Finger Five seemed to not only emulate those above-mentioned American groups in song but also in fashion. I vaguely remember seeing them on TV as a very young kid myself but my first sight of them was actually through the pages of one of those thick pulp manga . The group had become so popular that they were getting depicted in that medium as well.
In any case, "Koi no Dial 6700" became a monster hit with it hitting No. 1 right on New Year's Eve 1973 and staying there for another 3 weeks. It sold 1.6 million records and was also another hit for lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠） and composer Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）. It eventually became the 4th-ranked single for 1974.
As for what happened to Finger Five, they would release a total of 22 singles and 7 albums with the final single coming out in June 1978. Since then, the group has popped up a number of times under various names to get another shot at glory only to get more curiosity than adulation. But in 2003, they got together for a 30th anniversary concert which brought in their fans from all over the country.
A number of cover versions of "Koi no Dial 6700" have been performed, including one by the group Dream5 which released their version in January 2011. It peaked at No. 20 on Oricon.
I'm starting the Kyon-Kyon file pretty far into her career, but this is the song that reminds me most of her. It was her 28th single, and the 25th to break into the Top 10, when "Gakuen Tengoku"(Academy Heaven) was released in November 1989. It went as high as No. 3 on the Oricon weeklies and was the 44th-ranked song for 1990, spending 21 weeks on the charts. With the intro guitar blast and the "Are you ready? Hey, hey, hey" call-and-back, this is a karaoke wake-up call guaranteed to get everyone up and singing. By the way, Yoshio Nomura（野村義男）, the guitarist here, was once part of the Ta-No-Kin Trio, the darlings of Johnny's and Associates（ジャニーズ事務所） in the early 80s. The song had originally been part of her 1988 album "Natsumero"(ナツメロ...Old Melodies), which had Kyon-Kyon doing cover versions of kayo kyoku, but with "Gakuen Tengoku"'s success, it was given its own release.
"Gakuen Tengoku" was also the theme song of a popular school-based comedy titled "Aishi Atterukai"(愛しあってるかい....Are You Getting Any?) which starred Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子） herself as an English teacher (gonna have to check THAT out someday).
Kyoko Koizumi owns "Gakuen Tengoku" to such an extent that some people may not be aware that it is a cover of the 1974 song written by the then-most commercially successful lyricist of Japan, Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫...aka Daisuke Inoue）, for the singing group, Finger Five. Very much a product of its time, these were the Tamamoto Brothers from Okinawa in their long-haired and bell-bottomed glory...kinda like the Japanese version of the Osmond Brothers of Utah.
The original, the group's 5th single under the Philips label, did even a bit better than Koizumi's cover. It peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and sold around a million records while Koizumi's version sold around half a million discs.
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