Morton Stevens/The Ventures -- Theme from "Hawaii Five-0"

From YouTube

 

Former contributor and good friend JTM who lives in the Aloha State might snicker a bit, but whenever I hear about Hawaii, it's not palm trees, leis or ukuleles that first come to mind. I always think of gigantic waves...namely the one that shows up in the opening credits of the original "Hawaii Five-0" which began its dozen-year run in September 1968. The image kept imprinting itself into my head because I used to remember it as a toddler whenever the long-running cop series came on CBS (I can't quite believe that I was allowed to stay up that late). At one point, I just marveled at the fact that the wave didn't crash into our living room.

Speaking of those opening credits, they are iconic. It will go down as the coolest and most dramatic travelogue for the 50th State in pop culture history especially when the camera races up to the star, Jack Lord as Steve "Not a Hair Out of Place" McGarrett, turning toward it. Of course, what else is iconic is the theme song which has gone down as one of the best that television has ever come up with anywhere around the world.

We can thank composer Morton Stevens, a protégé of Jerry Goldsmith, for the theme. I have no idea how he was inspired to come up with something this epic for a cop show in Hawaii, but it's gotten to the point that if some band plays it anywhere, it will get a rousing round of applause and cheers...and maybe the odd "Book 'em, Danno, Murder One".

The thing is that Stevens was partially responsible for my early exposure to television music. I only found out recently that he had also been behind the elegant theme for the weekly CBS movies, and it even had a title "So Old, So Young". Along with his work on movie scores, he also had a hand in other television shows such as "Gilligan's Island", another one that I remember very well.

A musical cue that Stevens used in "Hawaii Five-0" got even more fame and popularity as it got a new job accompanying "A CBS Special Presentation" lead-ins. It was those lead-ins that got me excited for the fact that they invariably led me to "Peanuts" specials. The original track from "Hawaii Five-0" is below with that percussive cue revving up at around 47 seconds.

For a few years, I had assumed that The Ventures were the ones behind the theme for "Hawaii Five-0". Well, the band that has given its own contributions to kayo kyoku in Japan actually did the cover for Stevens' theme later in 1968 which became one of their big hits, peaking at No. 4 on Billboard. It did well in Canada, too, hitting No. 5 on RPM.

Of course, it came back for another decade on the new "Hawaii Five-O". And even for a beloved CG movie franchise.

Anyways, a couple of acts won some Best New Artist prizes at the Japan Record Awards in 1968.

Ken Yabuki -- Anata no Blues （あなたのブルース）

Pinky and Killers -- Koi no Kisetsu (恋の季節）

Ken Yabuki/Kiyoshi Hikawa -- Ushiro no Sugata/Anata no Blues （うしろの姿・あなたのブルース）

A couple of nights ago I was watching "Kayo Concert", and I was a bit late for the top batter in the singing lineup. It turned out to be enka veteran Yoshimi Tendo（天童よしみ）singing a song that I hadn't heard before, "Anata no Blues" (Your Blues). As I heard the mournful cry-in-your-sake melody and the anguished delivery by Tendo, I wondered out loud to my parents if this had been a Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）song. They didn't know but since I seem to have developed this affinity for this brand of Mood Kayo, I decided to dig further.

Well, I found out that the original singer for "Anata no Blues" was Ken Yabuki（矢吹健）, a Mood Kayo singer from Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture (good grapes there) who came down to Tokyo to study under composer Takuya Fujimoto（藤本卓也）. He made his debut in June 1968 at the age of 22 with "Anata no Blues", written and composed by Fujimoto, and he certainly made the most of his first single in terms of emotion. The songsheet could've wrung out a litre of tears. Listening to the YouTube video above, "Anata no Blues" is the second of the two songs, and as I listened to Yabuki, I thought he sounded a lot like another enka veteran Shinichi Mori（森進一）, something that the J-Wiki article on Yabuki indicated. In addition, my initial thought about it being a Keiko Fuji song also bore some fruit...it was indeed covered by the late singer a few years later. The Yabuki original managed to get as high as No. 27 on Oricon, selling close to 140,000 records.

The first song on the YouTube video is also quite appealing for that round in an old-fashioned nomiya. "Ushiro no Sugata" (The Back of You) is Yabuki's 4th single from May 1969, and the man sounds even more like Mori with that yell and vibrato in his delivery. I think the video of Yokohama Bay at night works well with the two songs; I hope it stays up for a good while longer. Fujimoto also composed the music for this one, but the lyrics were by Yoko Yamaguchi（山口洋子）, who would later write the breakthrough hit for Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）in 1971, "Yokohama Tasogare"（よこはま・たそがれ）.

Going back to "Anata no Blues", a number of other singers have also covered it over the decades, including Kiyoshi Hikawa（氷川きよし）. He also gives the song a goodly amount of anguished heft. I could imagine the poor protagonist having to be dragged out in despair by the exhausted lone bartender at closing time. Hikawa's rendition is on his 17th entry in his album series "Enka Meikyoku Collection 17" （演歌名曲コレクション１７...Famous Songs of Enka Collection 17）from November 2012.