'China Night' / World Famous Japanese Hit Melodies

    


  Here's a beloved old seven-inch four-song single from Nippon Columbia records. In particular I have been DJing it's 'best' cut The Soba Song for years and years, as it is such a prime example of a mutant country song, wonderful words, arrangement, and that middle-eight Solo Break -  Wow! You'll hear what I mean - truly inspiring.

By pure coincidence today's and my next post (April 16th) happened to be about Japanese records, unusual for me - I rarely seem to blog about anything remotely current, so I hope you like this record and the very tasty one coming up next.

   I think that this is another Asian record that I bought in San Francisco, many of them brought home by servicemen. I've no idea when this came out, and I like the metal spacer that came with it to fill out that big ol' 45rpm record hole.   Indeed - I know you'll be humming that Soba Song in no time at all.

China Night      Japanese Rumba      Gomen Nasai      The Soba Song

Comments

[Iskandertime]

3 Mustaphas 3 do a cover of this...

[Friendlynoises.blogspot.com]

Thanks for this. Mutant indeed--these were products of the post-war occupation of Japan and the Korean War.
Credits: Ho Mei Fan sings China Night; Norman Nishimoto and George Shimabukuro sing Japanese Rumba; Richard Bowers　sings Gomen Nasai; and the immortal Hibari Misora is responsible for this recording of The Soba Song.

[George Yakicic III]

This is an excellent EP, along with 2 others I picked up years ago.I would be more than glad to let someone put these other two up, but I'm not sure how to get them to mp3 form.

[Mindwrecker]

Thanks Friendlynoises, for listing the credits - I attached them to the mp3 files themselves originally, but I should have also listed them in the body of the posting. Apparently the 5 6 7 8's do a cover of the Soba Song as well. I had no idea (until I bothered to do some research today (a bit late!) that is was so popular! These would go well in a set with the Cambodian pop I put up a few weeks back.

[tomB]

I don't have audio, so I have to ask. Is the above version of China Night the same Kyu Sakomoto's less successful follow-up to Sukiyaki?

[Peter O]

I spent the whole day yesterday investigating this.

China Nights has been heavily covered. Sakamoto did one. Hibari did one. Even Martin Denny did one.

Haruomi Hosono covers Japanese Rumba on his 1978 album, Paraiso. (This is a very strange song if you understand Japanese).

Gomennasai became something of a vocal standard. Harry Belafonte recorded it.

As Iskandertime says, 3 Mustaphas 3 do a version of the Soba Song ("orientalizing" it via the Middle East). My favorite recent cover is by Kiwi & the Papaya Mangoes. LINK:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0pGsiXT8Ss

[zac]

I have one for sell. Almost perfect condition...