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.
Showing posts with label Fusanosuke Kondo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fusanosuke Kondo. Show all posts
Yes, along with the fact that May the 4th is Greenery Day in Japan, it's May the 4th as Star Wars Day everywhere on the planet. I figure that if I'm going to commemorate Greenery Day, then why not this pop cultural holiday as well. The opening scene from "A New Hope" will always be one to awe the heck out of me. I'm sure that the first audiences to see the movie back on May 25th 1977 had eyes and mouths fully agape at the sight of the Imperial Star Destroyer chasing and capturing the Rebel Blockade Runner over Tatooine.
But let's focus on this day, May the 4th. I figure that it might be time to look at a few birthdays of Japanese singers. Cue "Entertainment Tonight" theme!👉
Earlier this afternoon, NHK's "Gogo Uta"（ごごウタ）was on and one of the guests happened to be a Chinese-born singer, Enrei（媛麗）, who gave this performance of a ballad titled "Good-by morning". Usually the program features a lot of enka and Mood Kayo, but this particular number was more on the pops side, and the way that Enrei sang it reminded me of some of the songs by 80s singer Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）.
Thinking that it was a new song (and obviously not reading the songwriter information that usually pops up at the bottom of the screen), I decided to look it up on YouTube and J-Wiki. Although I couldn't find out anything about Enrei, I did discover that the singer was actually doing a cover whose origins were in the 1970s.
1976, to be exact. I saw the video that you see above and saw the singer's name as Sandy. But looking at the woman on the cover, I thought it could have been Sandii as in Sandii & The Sunsetz, a band that I had always identified as a New Wave group, certainly from the song that I had written about, "Battery" from 1986.
Indeed that Sandii and the Sandy for this song were one and the same (real name being Aya Suzuki/鈴木あや). Starting her career in show business as a pin-up girl in the early 1970s, she also released a few singles under the name Sandi Ai（サンディー・アイ）and then Sandy O'Neil. Included in those was "Good-by morning" which earned her a top prize in singing at the 7th World Popular Song Festival in 1976.
With lyrics by singer-songwriter Mayo Shouno（庄野真代）and music by Kaoru Nakajima（なかじまかおる・中島薫）, the original "Good-by morning" has that plaintive tone as a man tries to fix things with his love although it's not at all certain whether he will be successful. However, he's going to do his darnedest while the meaning of that title hangs over his head. The melody, though, sounds pretty hopeful with a hint of blues in there.
I don't know how "Good-by morning" did back then, but apparently it has been covered by a variety of artists over the years. One example was in November 1992 when blues singer Fusanosuke Kondo（近藤房之助）and Keiko Utoku（宇徳敬子）from the trio Mi-Ke did a duet version of the song with the title written in English. I like this version even better since it has quite a bit more blues feeling and it reminds me of an Eagles ballad. The single peaked at No. 19 on Oricon and is available as a track on Utoku's BEST album, "THE BEST 'eternity'" from December 2003.
Now with both Kondo and Utoku having collaborated as part of B.B. Queens (Mi-Ke was the backing chorus trio for the group), that group decided to go for its own version in 2011 as a track in the 25th anniversary edition single of their most famous song "Odoru Ponpokorin"（おどるポンポコリン）. This take definitely has more of a 50s doo-wop style.
Incredible how curiosity into a song on a kayo show can reveal a whole lot about its history.
A few weeks ago, I did an article on urban contemporary singer Yuiko Tsubokura（坪倉唯子）so that I could show some of her stuff from that genre compared to her most famous role as the co-lead vocal for B.B. Queens, the group responsible for "Odoru Ponpokorin"（おどるポンポコリン）. Her singing partner was the also heavily made-up Fusanosuke Kondo（近藤房之助）, normally a Japanese blues singer with a passing resemblance to the original host of the 90s Fuji-TV show, "Ryori no Tetsujin"（料理の鉄人）, otherwise known in America as "The Iron Chefs".
During those 3 years in Toronto between stints in Japan, karaoke was still very much a viable option for weekend fun with the buddies. However, the old university haunt of Kuri in Yorkville was no more, but there was Sushi Bistro on Queen West which had the sushi bar on the first floor with a bar on the second floor and one fairly big karaoke room in the back. It was in the bar area that I first heard "BOMBER GIRL" as a duet between Kondo and singer-songwriter Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）.
All these years placing Oda as the songwriter for acts like summer band TUBE and rocker Nanase Aikawa（相川七瀬）, and here is in front of the mike. Pretty cool dude in the shades. Of course, in the bar, it was a couple of Japanese guys screaming away into the microphones but they did the song justice since I wanted to find out later on who it was originally sung by. The kanji names that flashed up in the tome-like listings were not known to me at the time, but later on when I deepened my knowledge on Japanese music, I realized that one-half of the duet was one-half of the singing duo on "Odoru Ponpokorin". Still, despite the coolness (or probably because of it) of the song, I never attempted "BOMBER GIRL" at karaoke in Japan. My voice would have been in traction for weeks.
Kondo took care of the rock-on melody while Chinfa Kan（康珍化）handled the lyrics. It was released in January 1992 as a single featuring Oda and Kondo which managed to peak at No. 20. It was also featured as a track on Oda's 10th album from June 1992, "Endless Dream". As for the official music video at the very top, the young woman popping up is well known to some of the older J-Drama fans, Naoko Iijima（飯島直子）. To be honest, though, I couldn't recognize her on sight. It took me reading about her on the J-Wiki article on "BOMBER GIRL", and then verifying it for myself.
The song also became tied up with a Calbee potato chips commercial featuring Rie Miyazawa（宮沢りえ）. I recall she was also featured a few years earlier in another rockin' ad.
People know when the weekend is almost up when the 6 p.m. hour arrives on Fuji-TV on Sunday night, and the twin anime of "Chibi Maruko-chan"（ちびまる子ちゃん）and "Sazae-san"（サザエさん）start up.
"Chibi Maruko-chan"(Tiny Little Maruko) was a shojo manga first created in 1986 by Momoko Sakura（さくらももこ）, and depicts the life of a young and slightly cheeky girl named Maruko Sakura in suburban Japan of the mid-1970s. It was basically a semi-autobiographical account of the author's life as a girl back in those days. As with the much older "Sazae-san" series, it gained its popularity due to its nostalgic, down-home style. In 1990, Fuji-TV picked "Chibi Maruko-chan"up as an anime series for an initial run of 2 years, and then started it up again in 1995. In terms of ratings, the show attained a whopping 39.9% of the audience, the highest ratings ever garnered by an anime at that time.
The original ending theme of the show also enjoyed similar fame. "Odoru Ponpokorin"(Dancing Ponpokorin) was composed by singer Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎） (known for composing hits for rocker Nanase Aikawa and summer band TUBE) and written by Momoko Sakura herself. And the band making their first single all come alive was the unit B.B Queens, a happy-go-lucky amalgam of otherwise serious musicians.
The band name was a riff on the blues singer B.B. King. The main vocal is Osaka-born Yuiko Tsubokura（坪倉唯子）who has had a career since 1979 as a studio musician and backup vocal (Miyuki Nakajima, Misato Watanabe) but also has had her own solo career as a pop singer. For "Odoru Ponpokorin", Tsubokura sings it as if she were Chibi Maruko-chan, and looks like a combination of Mrs. Doubtfire and former First Lady of Japan Miyuki Hatoyama.
Her partner is Fusanosuke Kondo（近藤房之助）, a blues-and-rock singer who hails from Aichi Prefecture and has been in the music business since 1976 when he started with the band BREAK DOWN. He barks his vocals in a loud rasp and looks like a psychedelic Snidely Whiplash. The trio of backup vocals for B.B. Queens ended up becoming the neo-retro group Mi-ke a couple of years later. Both Kondo and Tsubokura have their own songs on YouTube, and they sound very, very different.
Here are the ending credits to the original run of "Chibi Maruko-chan" in 1990. As I said, "Odoru Ponpokorin" became a huge hit when it was released in April. It was the No. 1 song for July and September, and eventually became the No. 1 song of the year, staying on the charts for 54 straight weeks. The creators of the song, Oda and Sakura earned Japan Music Awards, and of course, an appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen was a foregone conclusion. It sold close to 2 million discs as a single and is included on the band's debut album, "We are B.B. Queens" which got as high as No. 32 on the Oricon weeklies. And of course, I'm sure karaoke box and bar owners were also very grateful to the band.
