Four Leaves -- Odoriko（踊り子）

 

Through some of the Author's Picks lists that have been posted up recently, I've come to realize that kayo kyoku songwriters enjoyed certain common words in their titles. Another one is "odoriko" or "dancing girl" (but also "dancing boy" although the former seems to be more common) for some reason. I don't have enough songs in my knowledge to put up another Author's Picks under that theme quite yet, but I can mention that I remember Kozo Murashita's（村下孝蔵）wistful "Odoriko" and Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）swift and stately "Izu no Odoriko"（伊豆の踊子）.

Well, here's another "Odoriko"...this time, the 31st single by the Johnny's aidoru group Four Leaves（フォーリーブス）released in June 1976. Written by Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）when he was still writing as Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, formerly of the Group Sounds band Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets（ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ）, this is quite the brassy tune with a touch of that GS despite it having gone the way of the dodo in the very early 1970s. Compared to the other two songs that I cited in the previous paragraph, the whole thing about Four Leaves' "Odoriko" is a fair bit more sad and salacious as a dancer-for-money slips off the nice-person act and the latest conquest like lint off a sleeve.

For listeners who've picked up on the observation that there seems to be another earlier and more well-known song lurking in the background of "Odoriko", well, I searched that out and I discovered that it takes the riff and chorus from "Let's Live For Today", the 1967 hit by rock band The Grass Roots. "Odoriko" itself scored a No. 41 ranking on Oricon and proved to be the ticket for Four Leaves' 7th and final appearance on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen in their first run between 1968 and 1978.

Four Leaves -- Ashita ga Umareru（あしたが生まれる）

 

Welcome to the first full week of May 2025 at "Kayo Kyoku Plus". It's comfortably cool outside here in Toronto and I didn't need to wear a jacket so perhaps spring is here to say. I am knocking on wood as I write this, however. As well, Japan is spending its last two days of Golden Week.

Found this one via a recent episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）during their new segment of going through the time vault by year. For that segment, the target was 1970 and an early Johnny's Entertainment aidoru group Four Leaves（フォーリーブス）got its first appearance on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen at the end of the year.

"Ashita ga Umareru" can be directly translated as "Tomorrow will be Born" but according to the bottom-left cover of the single, it's been stated as "Our Tomorrow". In any case, this was Four Leaves' 8th single from July 1970 and as I mentioned above, this was the song performed by the guys in their first of seven appearances on the New Year's Eve special. Written by Shigeo Sanpei（三瓶茂夫）and composed by Tomohiro Kajisawa（梶沢知弘）, it's a pretty rousing tune with the familiar groovy arrangement of blasting horns, racing guitars and thundering drums of those days. Lyrically, it's about a man reaching adulthood and realizing his very mixed emotions about a perhaps former flame doing the same while remembering that one time when they were alone in that lodge in the woods. I gather that they weren't playing shogi.😘

Unfortunately, I couldn't find that Kohaku footage of Four Leaves, but I was able to find a plethora of concert scenes in the above video. "Ashita ga Umareru" scored a No. 23 ranking on Oricon.

Four Leaves -- Olivia no Shirabe（オリビアの調べ）

When I was a kid, I used to hear the name Olivia Hussey bandied about from time to time, not really knowing who she was. Well, I found out that she was this actress who got her big break in the 1960s from her role as Juliet in "Romeo & Juliet" (some sort of doomed romance, I think). However, the Japanese especially fell for her hard and it didn't hurt that she was married to singer Akira Fuse（布施明）for a time.

Last week on NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）, some of the male performers gave a rendition of a song by Four Leaves（フォーリーブス）. The name sounded familiar but for the life of me, that was really the only thing I could fathom about this group.

As it turns out, Four Leaves was one of the earliest Johnny's Entertainment groups, so you can say that it is one of the grand ancestors for SMAP and Arashi（嵐）. The group consisted of Koji Kita（北公次）, Takashi Aoyama（青山孝史）, Toshio Egi（江木俊夫）and Masao Orimo（おりも政夫）with their debut single, "Olivia no Shirabe" (Olivia's Melody) coming out in September 1968.

Man, it's quite the groovy trip with some of those nostalgic horns, rumbling drums and jangly guitar. And yep, the song is a lovelorn tribute to the aforementioned Olivia Hussey. She was indeed popular. Kita himself wrote the lyrics while Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）took care of the dynamic music. Nice touch with the harp, by the way. Just the whole arrangement has me thinking Group Sounds but probably none of the members ever touched instruments when performing anyways.

"Olivia no Shirabe" peaked at No. 15 on Oricon and it was also a track on their album "Hit! Hit! Hit! Four Leaves Golden Show ~ Four Leaves 1965-1975". Four Leaves lasted until 1978 after 38 singles and 7 consecutive appearances on the Kohaku Utagassen. In 2002, the four decided to get the old band together and even put out a new single "it's more Ai"（it's more 愛...It's More Love）in that year before finally calling it quits in 2009.

You might want to check out another kayo in tribute to another Olivia.