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.
A few years ago, I posted another Reminiscings of Youth article regarding Joe Jackson's classy "Steppin' Out" from 1982 and how I first heard it when I was walking through a Hudson's Bay department store (which is now extinct, by the way) near its record album department. The same thing had happened to me perhaps a few years earlier with a totally different song. There was all this groove and funk surrounding a lone and perhaps lonely trumpet with such a sharp presence.
I couldn't identify it back then but I would gradually find out that this was the one and only Herb Alpert behind his July 1979"Rise". You could have knocked me down with a feather at that realization; I'd had no idea it was the same guy behind his iconic 1960s Tijuana Brass sound and the man behind the jolly "Casino Royale" theme. "Rise" sounded so sexy and urban (so I guess it was well titled, eh?😈) and quite different from what had come before. Apparently, Alpert had once been asked to come up with disco versions of his old hits such as "Tijuana Taxi" and "A Taste of Honey" but he (and I) didn't feel too comfortable with that and so a new song was crafted. Good choice!
"Rise" hit No. 1 on US Billboard while on Canada's RPM, it hit No. 5. Back in March, Alpert celebrated his 90th birthday and so there was a feature celebrating his life and career as shown below. Still on the trumpet, I see!
So, what was in the Top 3 of Oricon when "Rise" had been released a few days prior?.
The above is an image of the April 1965 album by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, "Whipped Cream & Other Delights". Well, that cover certainly had a lot of people talking when the album hit the record shelves, and I recall Alpert coyly telling fans at the Brass' concerts that he had to apologize but he couldn't play the album cover for them. 😁
Now, judging from the fact that I'm talking about Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass here today, you'd all be forgiven for thinking that this is a special Reminiscings of Youth article but it really isn't. The track here is "Bittersweet Samba", a short song at under 2 minutes that I've heard from time to time over the decades, probably through commercials or those "Technical Difficulties" situations on the telly way back when.
But what I hadn't known was that "Bittersweet Samba" has had a much more significant presence in Japanese radio history in that it's been the theme song for the Nippon Broadcasting System program "All Night Nippon"which has been keeping night owls up almost every overnight in the week since October 1967. My impression is that if there's something that the Japanese are absolutely aces at, it's having mellow radio talk shows deep into the wee hours...in the case of "All Night Nippon", it's been from 1 am.
Yep, that's the one. This is one of the first albums, Japanese or non-Japanese, that I ever got to hear as a little tyke playing around on the carpet. In fact, I played it last night on my TEAC for the first time in ages; the bass tones have gotten muffled but Herb Alpert's distinctive trumpet is very much intact. And for the first time in ROY history, I'll be talking about an album rather than a single although I will keep things to just a few tracks.
Trumpeter Herb Alpert and the Tiujana Brass has already gotten representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" in the Reminiscings of Youth category for their provision of the catchy theme for the first "Casino Royale" movie in 1967. Even when I was watching the movie for the first time and heard the theme, I quickly figured that it had to have been Alpert with that puffy and breathy style of his.
Alpert and the Brass'"Going Places" was their 5th album released in September 1965, just a month or so before I arrived in the world. Listening to the album again last night naturally brought back a whole wave of nostalgia. The first track is "Tijuana Taxi" which is a good song to get acquainted with the guys. Knowing my brother and myself back then, I figured that we were giggling all the time to that bicycle horn blasting away.
The other really recognizable track is "Spanish Flea" which is a playful tune that has a close connection to that "Casino Royale" theme. Probably out of all of the tracks, it's the most famous one in pop culture since it was used as background music for the American game show "The Dating Game" and humourously utilized as the go-to song whenever a TV station had technical difficulties.
"Going Places" is also known as the Alpert album of cover songs and one of them is "Walk, Don't Run" that had originally been a 1954 composition by jazz guitarist Johnny Smith and then covered by The Ventures in 1960. I got really hung up on this song for a while not knowing that it was a cover version. Of course, being that young at the time, my musical vocabulary and comprehension were minimal to say the least so I hadn't realized that the Tijuana Brass wasn't just solely doing the mariachi thing; they were also rocking hard, like with this particular track, and jazzing it up, too.
My final track is "And the Angels Sing" which was originally recorded by Benny Goodman in 1939 as a jazz tune. This was also another favourite of mine for its breezy and easy listening style. Alpert and everyone on the band sounded like they were having a grand old time with this one.
It was fun for me going down memory lane with "Going Places", and apparently so did many people when the album first came out. It stayed at No. 1 on US Billboard for six weeks straight. To finish things off here, I came across some poignancy when I was reading up on Alpert's biography and perhaps this quote could help those who are just starting out in anything and have gotten discouraged. I found it on Wikipedia but the original source is the April 2017 issue of "Off Beat".
All artists should be looking for their own voices. I went through a period of trying to sound like Harry James and Louis Armstrong and Miles [Davis]. And then when Clifford Brown came along, it was almost discouraging. The guy was so good! But I kept at it. I loved playing. And then when I heard Les Paul multitrack his guitar on recordings, I tried that with the trumpet. Boom—that sound came out. After I released ‘The Lonely Bull,’ the record that started A&M in 1962, a lady in Germany wrote a letter to me. She said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Alpert, for sending me on a vicarious trip to Tijuana.’ I realized that music was visual for her, that it took her someplace. I said, ‘That’s the type of music I want to make. I want to make music that transports people.
And of course, he did find his own sound. As much as Miles Davis has his own voice, so does Herb Alpert.
Uh, no...I'm not talking about "You Know My Name" from the 2006 Bond film"Casino Royale" starring Daniel Craig in his first outing as 007. I've yet to see his final outing in "No Time To Die" but someday when I have time...
Actually, this ROY article will be referencing the 1967 "Casino Royale" starring the late Peter Sellers in his lone outing as 007. I've seen it once in its entirety and then in bits and pieces over the years, and I have to say that either way comes out the same: a rather trippy 60s hot mess. But for those who love 60s pop culture, this is quite the movie and I think that it had quite the influence on the "Austin Powers" franchise.
If I ever opt to watch this "Casino Royale" again, I will still have that sardonic and ironic look on my face but a couple of songs came out of this movie that have stood the test of time, one being "The Look of Love" by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and performed by Dusty Springfield, and it got its Oscar nomination for Best Song.
Bacharach also did the music for the entire film and so he was also responsible for the other neat song, namely the theme for "Casino Royale" as performed by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. The crazy thing is that my family actually has their album "Going Places" by the group.
The hit "Going Places" was released about a month before my birth, September 1965, and remembering what I've heard from this album, it's Alpert with his distinctively puffy sound on his trumpet and his guys just having a brassy fun time especially with "Tijuana Taxi". Not quite sure why my folks bought this one; perhaps it was in commemoration of my arrival on Earth...I was actually going places, albeit from the womb to the surgeon's hands.
But getting back to the Brass and "Casino Royale", when I was watching the flick for the first time on telly (missing the first several minutes), I kept hearing the theme popping up here and there all throughout the movie and I was wondering whether it was indeed Herb Alpert. Well, of course it was. I mean, that trumpet is unmistakable. The amazing thing is that even from listening to all that down-in-Mexico music by the Brass on "Going Places", their "Casino Royale" theme has been called the distillation of all that was swinging in 1960s London and I couldn't agree more. It's sexy, heroic, adventurous and fun with a wink of humour. I guess that it's Roger Moore.
According to Wikipedia, the theme song was Alpert's 2nd No. 1 hit on the Billboard Easy Listening chart in June 1967 where it stayed for a couple of weeks.
However, the movie itself first appeared in theatres on either side of the Atlantic in April of that year, so what was premiering in the Japanese record stores in that month according to Showa Pops (unfortunately that site no longer exists)?
Yukari Ito -- Koyubi no Omoide （小指の思い出）(although J-Wiki states that it came out in February)
Haruo Minami -- Sekai no Kuni Kara Konnichiwa (世界の国からこんにちは）(a lot of artists were releasing the same song that month)
Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets -- Blue Chateau（ブルー・シャトウ）(although J-Wiki states that it was released in March)
