Morton Gould -- So In Love/Night and Day

Wikimedia Commons

This week's Reminiscings of Youth will be a little more unusual and involved so please bear with me today. For one thing, this really ought to be one of those Reminiscings of Babyhood articles actually, but I'll explain as we go along.

For citizens and international residents of Japan of a certain age such as myself, there was the weekly Sunday night Hollywood movie of the week on TV Asahi that lasted for decades since the 1960s. So, folks could watch anything from that decade to something more contemporary like a Steven Seagal action flick but it had to fit within the tight two-hour slot with commercials...which often meant that the movie had a fair amount of footage slashed out. Annoying as heck, but that's the way it was. 

The host of "Nichiyou Youga Gekijo"（日曜洋画劇場...The Sunday Western Movie Theatre） for most of its time was the avuncular and dapper movie critic and tarento Nagaharu Yodogawa（淀川長治）. He always showed up at the beginning of the show to introduce the film and then wrap up with his thoughts about it for a few minutes before signing off with "Sayonara, sayonara, sayonara". 

Then, there were the ending credits for "Nichiyou Youga Gekijo" which had stills or slow-motion footage of the movie just presented while this really dramatic and melancholy-sounding song played in the background. In fact, I found the music so sad that I was more than happy to switch the channel. I wouldn't find out until literally several days ago that the piece was a Cole Porter standard called "So In Love" as interpreted by conductor and arranger Morton Gould.

"So In Love" was a song used in one of Porter's famous musicals "Kiss Me Kate" from 1948. It was also used in the 1953 cinematic adaptation, but Gould's interpretation was presumably from 1951. Now that I've heard the whole thing above, I have a better view of it as something more epic and moving. Japanese commenters have complimented it as being very nostalgic since they used to watch the Sunday movie of the week when they were younger.

But "So In Love" hadn't been the main target for my ROY ROB this week. That was merely a happenstance stumbling discovery. Actually, it was for another Porter classic "Night and Day" which had been created in 1932. I remember getting to see it performed on the 2004 "De-Lovely", the Porter biopic musical starring Kevin Kline where I could glean some more insight into what the song was about.

Now, I realize that there have been many renditions of "Night and Day", sung and instrumental. But the reason that I started all this was that I remember the very first rendition that I heard of this song and it was by the aforementioned Morton Gould through his 1961 record "Kern/Porter Favorites" although that track later showed up on our "RCA 50 Years Of Hits In Stereo" that I wrote about last October. 

According to his Wikipedia article, Gould was a master of interweaving different musical genres into formal classical structure without losing any of the main elements from either the adopted genres or the original song. Gould had a few more contributions to my family's "RCA 50 Years of Hits In Stereo" which were "Brazil" and "Blues in the Night" and I note that he was epic and playful with those.

With "Night and Day", he showed that same verve for grandness. His take took the ultimate song of pining away in love and made it into his own overture movie. To me, his "Night and Day" sounds like a romance between two people rudely interrupted by war with the happy and grateful return interpreted as this huge orchestral rush. And it just happened to be a song that I heard often enough as a kid on the old RCA stereo.

So, let's see about some of the major singles of 1961 in Japan.

Kyu Sakamoto -- Ue wo Muite Arukou (上を向いて歩こう)

Yujiro Ishihara & Junko Makimura -- Ginza no Koi no Monogatari （銀座の恋の物語）

Hitoshi Ueki -- Suudara Bushi (スーダラ節）

Hitoshi Ueki -- Gomasuri Koushinkyoku（ゴマスリ行進曲）

 

Welcome to November 2023. It's definitely gotten seasonal here with the current temperature at 4 degrees Celsius. Hopefully, the chocolate bars and candies from last night's Halloween festivities have been tasty and won't end up as a coagulated semi-sentient mess in a year.

The video here is a decade old and comes from shin3mania TV and it shows someone grinding the sesame seeds which is known as gomasuri（ゴマすり）in Japanese. I've always done this whenever I go out to dine at any tonkatsu restaurant, and I do appreciate my ground sesame seeds on the tonkatsu itself or in the gloppy sauce. 

Gomasuri is also a slang term to mean ass-kissing or toadying up to the boss. I always saw that sort of character in a J-comedy set in the corporate world. They would be trying to curry favour with the president or section chief while seeing the main character as a meddling presence in the way up to the top.

My intention to start off the penultimate month of the year was to find something from my birth year of 1965 and I encountered this song by the late entertainer Hitoshi Ueki（植木等）. His most famous persona (although the real person was very far from this personality type) was that of the unrepentantly lazy and irresponsible company worker as displayed through his trademark tune of "Suudara Bushi" (スーダラ節）from 1961.

The 1965 song, "Gomasuri Koushinkyoku" (The Sycophant March) is another Ueki jaunty kayo kyoku of sinful personality where it's good to be as obsequious as possible. Gotta polish those apples and brown those noses. The usual trio arrived to take care of this song with Ueki behind the mike while Hiroaki Hagiwara（萩原哲晶）came up with the snappy melody for the orchestra and Yukio Aoshima（青島幸男）was behind the lyrics. 

Not surprisingly, there was a movie for Ueki with "Gomasuri Koushinkyoku" as the theme song: "Nippon Ichi no Gomasuri Otoko"（日本一のゴマすり男...Japan's No. 1 Sycophant） which hit the theatres in May 1965. One of the cast members was Mie Hama（浜美枝）who would later show up in the James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice" a couple of years later. That must have been quite the change from Ueki to Connery. In any case, you can see Ueki and Crazy Cats performing the song below and they're even doing the gesture for gomasuri.

(Unfortunately the video has been taken down.)

s**t kingz -- Suudara Bushi feat. BUSINESS FISH（スーダラ節）

 

A few months before the pandemic rushed in and destroyed the Routine that my anime buddy and I had every couple of Sundays, the two of us had been watching a Fall 2019 anime called "Africa no Salaryman"（アフリカのサラリーマン...African Office Worker）, a slice-of-life show featuring the indigenous animals of that continent involved as cogs in the corporate machine. I wasn't aware that there had been something similar earlier in the year called "Business Fish" adapted from a web comic series which had a more ichthyic emphasis.

Never saw an episode of "Business Fish" which isn't only the title but also the name of the main character, but I was drawn to what was probably the special ending theme for the final episode. After all, "Sudara Bushi" (The Suudara Song) is one of the classic kayo originally done back in 1961 by the late Hitoshi Ueki（植木等）of comical band Crazy Cats, and it had a resurgence in popularity one year in the 1990s to the extent that Ueki showed up on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen.

Well, "Sudara Bushi" got a rap/hip-hop update for "Business Fish" courtesy of XLII and Dotama as that special ending theme with Ueki still helping out and the snappy choreography by four-man group s**t kingz. I wrote about the guys several months ago because of their "Egao!"（えがお！）and their dancing keeps me coming back for more.

But it wasn't enough for Business Fish to get all of the dancing glory. s**t kingz themselves also got to do the live-action version of the dance in their own video, and it is quite glorious to see them bust a move while dressed in those 60s sober-sided suits and hairdos.

As for the original ending theme and credits, the song is "Don't Stop Moving" by Sarah Kelly.

Nat King Cole/Johnny Mathis -- The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)

 

Man, what a quandary! Choosing between Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis over who gave the definitive version of "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)" is kinda like having to opt for either turkey or glazed ham as the main dish on December 25th. Maybe it's an easy decision for you readers but for me, I think that both versions of the 1945 Mel Torme/Robert Wells creation are absolutely brilliant.

And to throw something out of left field at you, I think "The Christmas Song" and Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）"Christmas Eve" have something in common. To specify, both songs apparently came about as a counter-response to the season known as summer. Tats didn't particularly appreciate being brushed off as being merely a summer song singer so he lashed back with the J-Xmas song that has become a perennial tune to be played on TV and in the stores. Meanwhile, according to Wikipedia, "The Christmas Song" was born when Torme and Wells needed to beat back some torrid July heat by thinking and writing about cool thoughts. Not sure if the ploy worked in terms of any cooling effect, but it's safe to say that "The Christmas Song" has become far more eternal as a beloved Xmas number.

I'm going to start off with Johnny Mathis' version of the song since it was the first version that I had ever heard as a kid thanks to that Ronco LP "A Christmas Gift" with all of those chestnuts (pun fully intended) on it. Originally coming from his "Merry Christmas" album from October 1958, Mathis' dulcet delivery has had me tearing up sometimes in the past because of its wistfully magical and wonderful arrangement with the strings and the chorus behind him. This is the song that has people ensuring that they have fireplaces in their new homes.

For several years, Mathis' take was the only one that I knew but then I finally heard Nat King Cole's version on a jazz compilation of Xmas songs that I bought in Japan. The interesting thing is that the legendary Cole had recorded at least four versions of "The Christmas Song" starting from 1946 with the 1961 take being the most beloved version. Again, those iconic vocals are front and centre here but the feeling of his take is epic and intimate at the same with the strings helping out on the former while the jazz group feel takes care of the latter. It's like listening to it at Cole's own home Xmas party with good friends and family surrounding the piano.

Like a lot of eternal standards, "The Christmas Song" is just one of those tunes that was crafted so well that any professional singer and/or musician could send it out of the park if they were of a mind to do so. Jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi gave his version on the soundtrack for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and even Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）has brought her own cover which I wrote about long ago. And all this came about because two songwriters didn't bother to hit the fridge to get some cold soda pop.

Anyways, going with the Cole version, what were the big hits in Japan back in 1961?

Kyu Sakamoto -- Ue wo Muite Arukou (上を向いて歩こう)

Yujiro Ishihara & Junko Makimura -- Ginza no Koi no Monogatari （銀座の恋の物語）

Hitoshi Ueki -- Suudara Bushi (スーダラ節）

Hitoshi Ueki -- Damatte Ore ni Tsuite Koi（だまって俺について来い）

Well, today wasn't exactly the greatest day in terms of my surrounding environment. There was a small leak in the unit above that was affecting my unit, and there was a misunderstanding in terms of logistics earlier for the plumber's arrival, so I got to see my usually cheerful superintendent go ballistic on the property manager (but the plumber came an hour ago and now everything is copacetic). Then, around the dinner hour, the power went out due to the high winds outside affecting power lines, but that was only an hour's worth of inconvenience.

I seem rather sanguine, don't I? Look, after all the sturm und drang of my youth and younger years, I've come to the conclusion that life is now too short (especially since passing 50 a few years ago) to go nuts on something that is not really worth getting all worked up about. Plus, taking it out on folks who are trying to help only leads to massive guilt afterwards, believe me.

Come to think of it, the late entertainer Hitoshi Ueki（植木等）of the comical band Crazy Cats（クレージーキャッツ）probably had something akin to the right idea. Perhaps more accurately put, it was his onscreen persona of the most feckless salaryman who had the right idea since I've heard that the real Ueki was a fairly serious and dour fellow.

Last night on "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, enka prince Kiyoshi Hikawa（氷川きよし）did a cover of Ueki's November 1964 single "Damatte Ore ni Tsuite Koi" (Shut Up and Follow Me). Never having heard this lively kayo that seems to fit Ueki's Mr. Irresponsible to a well-crossed "T", I looked it up on YouTube and found the original as you can see above.

With some brassy brass and a hearty cackle that would even make The Joker stand up and applaud, Ueki is the guy you want at your side while singing this song. If you haven't quite reached that sanguine point in your life, he's the fellow who will kick you out of your blues and pull you over to a bar for some drinks and lively conversation.

Written by Yukio Oshima（青島幸男）and composed by Hiroaki Hagiwara（萩原哲晶）, the same duo behind Ueki's most famous song, "Suudara Bushi"（スーダラ節）, "Damatte Ore ni Tsuite Koi" got the singer to perform it on the 1964 Kohaku Utagassen on NHK. Perhaps after all of the hoopla and stress surrounding the Tokyo Olympics that year and the need to show Japan's best side in the postwar era, a little bit of silly and whimsical was perhaps what the doctor ordered, thanks to Ueki.

Hitoshi Ueki -- Suudara Bushi (スーダラ節）

One year during the 90s, there was an old entertainer who just seemed to take over the stage and screen again, years after his heyday in the 50s and 60s. Hitoshi Ueki（植木等）of The Crazy Cats was back on top with his old chestnut, "Suudara Bushi"(The Suudara Song). It didn't spark a mass revival of 60s Japanese comic jazz bands on the same level as lounge and jive did back in North America at around the same time, but the Japanese seemed to embrace Ueki like a beloved long-lost uncle.

The Crazy Cats were originally known as The Cuban Cats when they first formed in 1955. Doing the army base circuit, supposedly one soldier, after seeing one of the members smash another bandmate's head with a sink, apparently said, "You, crazy!". And the change in name was made. The most famous members of the band were the leader and drummer Hajime Hana（ハナ肇）, trombonist Kei Tani（谷啓） and guitarist/vocal Hitoshi Ueki....all of whom left this mortal coil in the last 20 years.

Fellow comedian and one-time Tokyo Governor Yukio Aoshima（青島幸男）wrote the lyrics while Hiroaki Hagiwara（萩原哲晶）took care of the melody. "Suudara Bushi" has the underlying element of raucous old-time enka/kayo kyoku while bits of dissonance come in as the comedy. Hagiwara composed the song in the aims of matching Ueki's amiable but feckless character on stage, and even lifted, with Ueki's approval, the singer's favourite nonsensical phrase of "Sui, sui, suuuuuidararatta..."to incorporate into the main chorus of the song.

Aoshima's lyrics were ironic, to say the least. In a country of steady hard-working tortoises in the early 1960s, Ueki portrayed himself musically as the irresponsible procrastinating hare. With the face of a sly fox, he was the lazy salaryman who loved his mug of beer and betting on the horses far more than work. For him, vice over virtue was his mantra. One repeated line was the gleeful "Yeah, I know, I know....but I just can't help myself!"

Even more ironic was that Ueki the man was an extremely serious fellow outside of work. As his father had predicted, "Suudara Bushi" was a huge hit, selling 800,000 records in the pre-Oricon days. Even so, on hearing about the massive success of the song, Ueki forlornly remarked, "For this song to become a hit is pretty sad." He was also quoted as saying, "This as a hit makes me wonder if the Japan I know and the real Japan are two different things." Not a happy camper, was he? In any case, he was the consummate professional on stage and screen. Despite his misgivings about the Frankenstein he had wrought, he and the rest of the Crazy Cats made a series of movies based on the song's character in what has been called the "Irresponsible" series. And every time he came out to perform the song, that leering grin of the feckless man always beamed...

March 27, 2021: The song's legacy continues here.