Takeshi Terauchi and His Blue Jeans -- Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer

 

Well, we are really on the cusp of the big day since today is Christmas Eve. And hooray! Toronto will be guaranteed a White Christmas for the first time in four years. The video above is of a local neighbourhood here called Inglewood Avenue in the Midtown area and around the Holidays, the street name takes on a couple of more consonants to become Kringlewood (after Kris Kringle) because just about every house has taken on some huge versions of illumination and Christmas decoration, a phenomenon that has also caught on in the States. Traffic jams have become common due to all of the tourists coming by to take photographs and this was before the snow arrived. Just imagine what it's going to be like tonight and tomorrow. Unionville now has a rival in the Yuletide department!

It used to be an annual tradition within our household to catch as many of the Christmas animated specials that we could such as "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Another one was the Rankin-Bass production of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" which made its premiere back on December 6th 1964.

Well, sometime during that same year, the ereki band Takeshi Terauchi and His Blue Jeans（寺内タケシとブルージーンズ）came up with their first Christmas record titled "Let's Go Christmas". One track included there was a twist-friendly instrumental version of the Gene Autry 1949 original song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", and it's definitely swivel-hippingly aural fun for the whole family. It's also interesting to note that on Discogs where "Let's Go Christmas" is listed, each of the four tracks has its own distinct genre attached. You can also listen to the entire album with commentary at Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu".

Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans -- Blue Jeans No. 1（ブルー・ジーンNo.1）

 

I read the report on Mixi about an hour ago and unfortunately, Takeshi Terauchi（寺内タケシ）, the leader of Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans（寺内タケシとブルージーンズ）, the ereki band from the early 1960s, passed away yesterday at the age of 82 from pneumonia. Allow me to give my condolences to his family, friends and fans.

It was only back in April this year that I first read about Terauchi in the book "Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon ~ A Geopolitical History of J-Pop" (2012) by Michael K. Bourdaghs, and as such, I wrote up about his band's "Ame no Omoide"（雨の想い出）from 1965. One thing that I didn't mention in that article is his grand title: "Ereki no Kamisama"（エレキの神様...The God of the Electric Guitar）.

As tribute to Terauchi, I give you one song that has been called one of Terauchi & Blue Jeans' trademark tunes, "Blue Jeans No. 1". According to an Instagram page, the song was released with "Your Baby" as a 45" single in August 1965 and according to the YouTube explanation for the above video, it was also a track on a 1964/1965 LP release titled "Beat! Beat! Beat! Vol.1&Vol.2".

This instrumental "Blue Jeans No. 1" is a robust and jaunty guitar lark with skippy drum beats and a cheerful electric organ that was all concocted by Blue Jeans' member Kunihiko Kase（加瀬邦彦）. Terauchi and the gang sound like they're having a good time of it all. Considering the date of release, the song probably wouldn't fall under the Group Sounds umbrella but within the last little bit of the ereki boom in the early part of that decade.

Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans -- Ame no Omoide（雨の想い出）

 

Happy Monday! Through the recommendation of fellow KKP administrator and contributor Marcos V., I purchased this book called "Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon ~ A Geopolitical History of J-Pop" (2012) by Michael K. Bourdaghs. It truly does tackle the music in Japan that occurred in the decades before the advent of J-Pop (which I think came about near the end of the 1980s during the Bubble).

So far, I've read about postwar singers including Shizuko Kasagi（笠置シズ子）, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Kyu Sakamoto（坂本九）. It's been an interesting read just before bedtime although sometimes I think Bourdaghs tends to over-intellectualize in parts. Still, I've been all in for the chapter on the Group Sounds boom in the late 1960s and the author has presented three case studies in that chapter with the first study being on a legendary guitarist named Takeshi Terauchi（寺内タケシ）who's basically been lionized as one pillar of J-Rock. In fact, in his section, one critic even labeled the man as perhaps the best rock guitarist on little ol' Earth through his talent and experimentations on his guitar.

And yet, according to Boudaghs, although he livened up both the first ereki (electric guitar) boom in the early 1960s and the Group Sounds period in the latter half of that decade, Terauchi didn't continue on with his rock god status going into the 1970s, instead just letting himself fade down to a relative simmer. But for me, that doesn't sound like a bad way to go...it's almost like the old saying about leaving the stage while keeping the audience wanting more.

I found out that in 1962, Terauchi formed a band called Blue Jeans（ブルージーンズ）and in the beginning, there was a bit more jazz in there including a saxophonist and wood bassist, but gradually it became mostly an ereki band as you can see in the thumbnail. Apparently, according to J-Wiki, there were three different iterations of Blue Jeans going into the 1970s, but the song of note here, "Ame no Omoide" (I'll Remember in the Rain) comes from 1965 during the band's first phase which lasted between that formation year of 1962 and 1966 when Terauchi left Blue Jeans for a while.

Of course, I'm no expert on the intricacies of guitar rock or history of Japanese rock during the 1960s but listening to Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans' instrumental "Ame no Omoide", I do get some of that Ventures vibe and also a feeling of Spanish guitar from a spaghetti western. Plus, it's also interesting to hear that electric piano near the end. Terauchi handled the arrangement while fellow Blue Jeans guitarist Kunihiko Kase（加瀬邦彦）came up with the melody. Kase would later on join the Group Sounds band The Wild Ones and then become a prolific composer/lyricist which includes Kenji Sawada's（沢田研二）hit "TOKIO" in 1980.