Izumi Yukimura -- Sweet and Gentle（スィート・アンド・ジェントル）

 

I gather that there was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the various types of Latin dance music such as the mambo and cha-cha were greatly welcomed in the pop music of Japan and America. Singer Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）back then was also one great purveyor of that brand of music and what a voice she had at the age of 18 in 1955.

A few years ago, I posted one song of hers that got onto the November 1955 Toho musical "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘...So Young, So Bright） which  starred the San-nin Musume（三人娘）of Yukimura, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）. "Yume no Mambo"（夢のマンボ）was given brassy life by Yukimura and was created by lyricist Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）and composed by Hachiro Matsui（松井八郎）.

One other song that got into the movie was "Sweet and Gentle", also by Ida and Matsui. The above video was given the title "Ton-chan Cha-Cha"（トンちゃんCHACHA）but the J-Wiki article on "Janken Musume" has titled it as "Sweet and Gentle" so I'm going to go with that. In any case, it's pretty nostalgic seeing Yukimura hoofing it up with fellow dancers on stage like that; I used to see those on television when I was a very young kid. It's just too bad that there is only one copy of the song on YouTube as of this writing.

A bit of a small video PS from me but for the longest time, I'd been wondering whether weathercaster Rinon Oshima（大島璃音） of "Weathernews Live" actually looked like someone famous. I wouldn't consider Rinon a doppelganger at all, but I think there is a slight resemblance between her and young Izumi...at least from the nose down.

Izumi Yukimura/Masashi Sada/Misia -- Niji ~ Singer（虹～Singer）

 

As has been the case for the past few years, I'm betting that R&B/pop singer Misia will be finishing up the Red Team's contributions to the annual Kohaku Utagassen in a couple of months' time. We should be hearing the announcement on the lineup in a few weeks.

When I first came across this song by her last night, looking at the thumbnail, I'd assumed that Misia contributed her song to the NHK children's song vignette program "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）. I failed to look at "the fine print" a little more closely as I now know that the name there is "Minna no Sada"（みんなのさだ...Everyone's Sada）. In other words, I was looking at the cover of singer-songwriter Masashi Sada's（さだまさし） tribute album to commemorate his 50th anniversary in the music industry. The album came out today. I wouldn't be surprised if "Niji ~ Hero"（虹～Hero...Rainbow ~ Hero） were the song that she will perform on December 31st on NHK since it's the type of soulful showstopper that she's done in past editions of the New Year's Eve special and it's been written and composed by Sada himself, someone who's made his presence known on the Kohaku as well.

It's happened often enough before and I'm glad that it has, but this particular song has taken me down the rabbit hole because it has a pretty long history. So, allow me to go back. Misia's "Niji ~ Hero" was originally known as "Niji ~ Singer" (Rainbow ~ Singer) and a recorded orchestral version of the song performed by Sada himself was placed onto his June 2013 BEST compilation "Appare ~ All-Time Best"（天晴〜オールタイム・ベスト〜...Clear Sky）. Not surprisingly, his version is the type that can wrench tears out of a slab of granite. From what I've read on J-Wiki though is that an earlier version of Sada's performance first appeared on his multi-disc April 1994 live album "Nochi no Omoi ni"（のちのおもひに...For Later Memories）.

However, Sada had created "Niji ~ Singer" for veteran singer-actress Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）to commemorate her 40th anniversary in show business back in 1994. With a similarly epic orchestra backing her up, it was the title track for her own April album "I'm a Singer". The arrangement is probably reminiscent of those appearances of pop singers back in Yukimura's early days as a teen on the televised music-variety shows such as "Yume de Aimashou"（夢で逢いましょう...Let's Meet In Our Dreams）, musicals back then, or even the early editions of the Kohaku Utagassen on which she appeared ten times up to 1989.

Gosanke: Ganso Sannin Musume（元祖三人娘）

 

We're into the third entry for the Gosanke（御三家）series, and with the first two, we've had the Ganso Gosanke（元祖御三家...the Original Big 3）from the 1960s and last week's Shin Gosanke（新御三家）of the 1970s. Those trios were all male, but I did forget that there were female trios as well with one even predating that original Gosanke of Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）, Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）& Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）.

Mind you, the term Gosanke wasn't used for these three ladies. The term that was used for the grouping of Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）and Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）was the Sannin Musume（三人娘...The Three Girls or The Three Bachelorettes）, and it started for them as of 1955. In fact, there is a kayo that I wrote about back in October 2016, "Suteki na Rendezvous" （素適なランデブー）, a theme song sung by them for a movie, "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘）, which proved to be the cinematic debut for the trio. Unfortunately, the J-Wiki article for "Sannin Musume" doesn't definitively illustrate how the powers-that-be brought together these particular three although it does mention that all three were born in 1937.

Along with the hit "Janken Musume", Misora, Eri and Yukimura also appeared in subsequent movies together and also showed up partially and totally on several editions of NHK's Kohaku Utagassen such as in 1954, 1957 and 1965. I'm pretty sure that the Sannin Musume also showed up in various television programs, too. As was the case with the original Gosanke, the Sannin Musume witnessed other female trios making their debuts in the decades to come, so although the three have still been called that original name, they've also gotten the moniker Ganso Sannin Musume (the Original Three Girls) or Shodai Sannin Musume（初代三人娘...the First-Generation Three Girls）.

Hibari Misora -- Yawara (柔）

Chiemi Eri -- Tennessee Waltz (テネシーワルツ)

Izumi Yukimura -- Omoide no Waltz （想い出のワルツ）

Izumi Yukimura with Caramel Mama -- Tokyo Boogie Woogie（東京ブギウギ）

 

Just around 8 years ago, I wrote up about "Mune no Furiko"（胸の振り子）a 1947 kayo that was given a cool contemporary spin through a collaboration between veteran singer Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）and musicians such as Masataka Matsutoya and Haruomi Hosono（松任谷正隆・細野晴臣）among others to create the 1974 "Super Generation"（スーパー・ジェネレイション）consisting of covers of the old kayo.

Last weekend, I had a nice chat with Rocket Brown of Come Along Radio and one of the topics was on how much he has enjoyed "Super Generation", especially one other track there, a cover of another 1947 hit, "Tokyo Boogie Woogie" which was originally recorded by Shizuko Kasagi（笠置シヅ子）. Since then of course, the standard has been covered countless times.

This time, though, "Tokyo Boogie Woogie" has Yukimura together with Caramel Mama (the future Tin Pan Alley) putting out a version that sounds as if it was absolutely meant to be performed and enjoyed in some actual roadside honky-tonk. Yukimura has got a mighty brassy voice while the piano is going full ragtime and the rock guitar goes wa-wa-wa. It was quite the match between 1940s kayo and 1970s New Music.

Rocket has put up his own review of "Super Generation" so have a look at it in his own blog.

Izumi Yukimura -- Jingle Bells Mambo（ジングル・ベル・マンボ）

 

Hard to believe but we've reached December 2020 and I think that there are probably not a small number of people who can't wait for this year to be tossed out...including myself. However, having said that, let's see if we can at least start this final month with some Christmas cheer.

It certainly seems that the 2020 Xmas season on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" may end up as one of the busiest right up to the first year that I began including J-Xmas tunes onto the blog since I've been bookmarking some of the Japanese Yuletide stuff for several months and then corresponding with Scott who is quite the enthusiast for the rarefied genre of J-Xmas songs. Yesterday, I was able to get a sampler of some of those special songs from him which range from the 1950s all the way to the early 2000s.

Right off the bat, I was able to hear this one which is the topic of this article, Izumi Yukimura's（雪村いづみ）"Jingle Bells Mambo" from 1955. As probably I've mentioned this before, I first got to know the vivacious Yukimura through her appearances on television music shows and by that point, she was already well into middle age (currently she's 83) but back in the 1950s, she definitely left the impression of her being very much of the young spark plug.

And as she recorded the spicy "Yume no Mambo"（夢のマンボ）earlier in that same year of 1955, she came up with a feisty bilingual mambo version of "Jingle Bells" that practically screams for dirty martinis and candy canes to be served in a lounge. Yukimura really sank her teeth into the vocals like me into turkey. Seiichi Iida（井田誠一）, who had written the lyrics for "Yume no Mambo", provided the translated words for "Jingle Bells" that have probably become the standard Japanese delivery of the James Pierpont song including that version by Bob McGrath that I wrote about a couple of days ago. As for this cover, I couldn't find it on her J-Wiki discography and from the thumbnail for the video above, it looks like it probably wasn't an official single by her since it was placed on one side of that 45" record while Frank Nagai（フランク永井）had his cover of "Good Night Sweetheart" on the other side.

Considering that I've given two different Japanese-language takes on "Jingle Bells" in short order, I think that I will retire the song for the rest of the season and see if there are any versions of some of the other Xmas classics out there.

Izumi Yukimura -- Yume no Mambo（夢のマンボ）

Tonight's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）was more of an improvement over last week's episode which didn't quite mesh for me. However, I did feel that time was indeed flying by when I saw Toshi of X Japan perform a duet with a member of STU48 via Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）famous "Akai Sweet Pea"（赤いスイートピー）. Yup, things must be mellowing out.

Also, I got to see enka singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）, I believe, perform Izumi Yukimura's（雪村いづみ）debut song "Omoide no Waltz"（想い出のワルツ）. Now, checking the archives, I found out that I'd already written about that tune but still wanting to see what else was out there for Yukimura, I came across that movie of fun in the sun, "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘...So Young, So Bright）from 1955, which starred the San-nin Musume（三人娘）of Yukimura, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）. I've never seen the film myself but scrolling through the J-Wiki article, I realized that "Janken Musume" was also an opportunity for each of the singers to show off their vocal talents, so I guess that it was also a musical as well.

I'd been looking for a Yukimura song that wasn't actually a cover of an American pop tune from the same time period, and I was fortunate enough to find one in this movie called "Yume no Mambo" (Dream Mambo). Written by Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）and composed by Hachiro Matsui（松井八郎）, it's an appropriately spicy number with the singer flying through the lyrics like a really swift skylark. I would love to see if a video might pop up someday showing Yukimura actually performing this on stage somewhere.

Izumi Yukimura & Motoharu Sano -- Tokyo Chic（トーキョー・シック）

Happy Monday! I guess this article will feature one of the more unusual duets that I have ever come across in kayo kyoku. You have one of the Sannin Musume（三人娘）, the three popular songstresses who also included Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）from the early postwar period, paired up with a pop/rock balladeer of the 1980s for a jazz number in 2014.

And yet, this is what happened. Izumi Yukimura and Motoharu Sano（雪村いづみ＆佐野元春）collaborated to make a single together titled "Tokyo Chic" in February of that year. I've been quite impressed with Sano, who composed and wrote this song, since he's gone beyond my initial images of him as that jeans-and-T-shirt type of guy on the same lines of The Boss and The Piano Man from the late 70s and early 80s. Even before his official debut as a singer, he helped with Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）back during the 1970s through some City Pop and then for this decade, he came up with a wonderful tribute to Big Band/Swing jazz.

However I have to admit that Yukimura at the age of 76 back when this was recorded has definitely got the lead role here. I'm not sure if this is so much a duet as it is Sano trying to keep up with his partner. In any case, the duo has come up with a cheer-up song to get folks out of the blues and into painting the town red through one of the largest cities on the planet Earth. Plenty to see and do in Tokyo, to be sure. Just bring lots of yen!

Izumi Yukimura -- Cha-Cha-Cha wa Ikaga（チャチャチャはいかが）

I was just talking with contributor T-cat a couple of hours ago about how much we love the old stuff and noted as well the fact that I slightly consider myself an anachronism I may be. For instance, along with the songs, I do love watching the black-&-whites on Turner Movie Classics. And just last night, I did talk about some jazz at a time when we're approaching a century since the Jazz Age cropped up.

After making my comments to T-cat, on a whim, I decided to visit YouTube and see if there were any Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）songs there. I had already given the veteran singer and actress some attention through a few articles as someone that I first got to know through TV appearances when she was well into middle age.

I'd had no idea how much of a powerhouse singer she was right from her teens and once again, I've discovered another song for her to show off her chops. This is her cover of the American pop song "Ain'tcha-cha Comin' Out T-tonight?" as originally done by Jo Stafford in 1955. Yukimura's version from 1956 was re-titled into the Japanese "Cha-Cha-Cha wa Ikaga" (How About Some Cha-Cha-Cha?).

Now as I said last night, I have liked all kinds of jazz and that also includes the Latin jazz by folks such as Tito Puente and Perez Prado. And of course, there is Japan's Orquesta de la Luz. "Cha-Cha-Cha wa Ikaga" rather gets the spicier side of nostalgia flowing. Yukimura's English delivery is really quite good although I notice that she doesn't quite stutter the "tonight" as she does enunciate the "T" almost like a special prefix. But no complaints here...the song stayed in my head all throughout watching "VS. Arashi" tonight.

Norman Gimbel and Alec Wilder created the original Stafford song with Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）providing the Japanese lyrics for Yukimura. Ida also took care of the Japanese lyrics for Yukimura's cover of "Till I Waltz Again With You", known as "Omoide no Waltz"（想い出のワルツ）in Japan..

Hibari Misora -- Suteki na Rendezvous （素適なランデブー）

Here I was, having just seen the latest "Uta Kon"（うたコン）a couple of nights ago and enjoying the performance of "O-Matsuri Mambo"（お祭りマンボ）by the Eternal Queen of Kayo Kyoku, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, that I was going to write about it. However, I realized that I had already written about it over 3 years ago. Such is my crumbly memory and the fact that "Kayo Kyoku Plus" has lasted as long as it already has.

Well, I wasn't going to be discouraged from putting up a Misora song so easily. It took a little time but I did manage to find one of her happy-go-lucky kayo from all the way back in 1955. "Suteki na Rendezvous" (A Wonderful Rendezvous) is not only a song whose cheerful music and lyrics rang off some memory engrams in my head but it was a tune used in the first of a series of movies starring the Sannin Musume（三人娘...The Three Girls）, the trio consisting of Japanese cinematic starlets, Misora, Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）and Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）when they would have been graduating from high school. The movie was titled "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘）which literally translated as "Rock, Paper and Scissors Girls" but is known less awkwardly in English as "So Young, So Bright".

Written and composed by Rokuro Hara（原六郎）, who had also created the aforementioned "O-Matsuri Mambo", "Suteki na Rendezvous" is notable for that catchy melody which, if it had been made in Hollywood, would have been great for any sort of 1950s musical based in Gay Paree starring an older Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly or Danny Kaye (as for the starring women, I would have had either Nanette Fabray or Debbie Reynolds sing it). Plus it has those lines "ren-ren-ren-ren-rendezvous, I-I-I-I-I love you" which have been the most memorable part of the song for me.

Although the song is performed just by Misora, I've still included Yukimura and Eri in the Labels merely for sentiment. And the ladies do perform a small part of it together up below at 2:24. It's a poignant scene since of the three, only Yukimura is still alive.

Izumi Yukimura -- Omoide no Waltz （想い出のワルツ）

Back in the days when my ears were merely beyond embryonic, songs like "Till I Waltz Again With You" were what I was first listening on the American side of things due to my Dad's collection of standards and what was still being played on US variety shows in the 1960s. Sid Proesen wrote and composed this old chestnut for Teresa Brewer in 1952, and it was a huge hit for her as it stayed on the charts for 22 weeks with 7 straight weeks at No. 1. If the account listed at Wikipedia is indeed true, then this could have been the song that sparked Elvis Presley into thinking "Hey, I might have a chance at this singing gig!"

Some months later across the Pacific, "Till I Waltz Again With You" also became a launching point for another veteran singer. In 1953, the song under the Japanese title of "Omoide no Waltz" (Waltz of My Memories) was the debut single for Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）. At the tender age of 16, she gave this slightly softer and jazzier version of the song in a voice that surprised the heck out of me since it sounded so much more polished than what a teenager would sound like behind a mike. And the above version is in the original English.

I gave a very slim background on the Tokyo-born Yukimura for my first article involving her so allow me to give some more details. Her childhood was sad in that her father who had been so much into music as a member of a Hawaiian band and introduced her to modern music committed suicide when his daughter was only 9 years old. In addition, her mother's company went bankrupt which meant that Yukimura had to drop out of junior high school despite her good grades. Most likely, because of her father's influence, she showed a desire to become a singer and so worked for free at a dance hall in Shimbashi called Florida in 1952. Later that year in May, she got a role at the Nichigeki Music Hall in a play as a cigarette girl and then made her professional debut as a singer for which she received her accolades.

Her debut with "Omoide no Waltz" got high praise and it also sold an amazing 200,000 records. Yukimura became so famous so quickly that she was even called The Cinderella of the Century. She was then placed with the other popular starlets Hibari Misora and Chieni Eri（美空ひばり・江利チエミ）to be seen as the unit San-nin Musume（三人娘...The Three Daughters）. Some years later, she made her way to the United States where she appeared on the Dinah Shore Show on NBC and was the first Japanese entertainer to grace the pages of "LIFE" magazine.

The Japanese lyrics for Yukimura's hit cover version were provided by Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）. Yukimura also appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen a total of 10 times with her most recent appearance to date in 1989 when he paid tribute to her late friend, Misora. However, none of those times featured her debut song.

Noboru Kirishima/Izumi Yukimura/Yujiro Ishihara -- Mune no Furiko （胸の振り子）

Tonight on NHK's "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）, singer Rimi Natsukawa （夏川 りみ）performed a wonderful jazzy rendition of an old kayo standard from decades back titled "Mune no Furiko" (Pendulum of My Heart). I liked the song so much that I decided to take a look for it on YouTube and found out that, true to its nature as a standard, it's been covered by a number of singers over the ages.

It was written by Hachiro Sato（サトウハチロー）and composed by Ryoichi Hattori （服部良一）in 1947 (Hattori would also create another fine kayo standard, "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie"), and it was first sung by popular singer Noboru Kirishima （霧島昇）who started his career in the 1930s. The lyrics and the music as it was sung back then by Kirishima reminded me of some of the love songs that the big bands played back in America. It was probably a fine song to listen to under the stars before bedtime.

The freeze image for the above video was one that I have seen leafing through the pages of  "Japanese City Pop", since it was the cover for Izumi Yukimura's （雪村いづみ）album "Super Generation" from 1974. Now, I've seen Ms. Yukimura a number of times on TV programs such as "Kayo Concert" and had never thought that she would end up in this book. But apparently, singer-actress Yukimura, who had debuted in 1953 when she was around 16 and became one of Japan's big 3 female singers alongside Chiemi Eri （江利 チエミ）and Hibari Misora （美空ひばり）, collaborated with the hot New Musicians of the 1970s such as Masataka Matsutoya （松任谷正隆）and Haruomi Hosono （細野晴臣）to give an updated spin to the music of Ryoichi Hattori with the help of his son, composer Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久）.

I was glad that I could finally get an "in" to "Super Generation". Yukimura's version of "Mune no Furiko" doesn't really strike me as being City Pop but more of a New Music take. In a way, there's something pretty Akiko Yano-ish about it. The album also includes the aforementioned "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie", so I'd like to hear that as well.

Of course, when I found the video of The Big Man himself, Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）, performing "Mune no Furiko", I also had to include this one although I'm not sure whether this was an official entry in his discography. However, his version is the closest to the one I heard by Natsukawa earlier tonight since it has that late-night bluesy jazz sound to it. And what better way to finish an evening than with some great mind-blowing sax?