The Life of a Song

In August, 1985, the worst single-plane air disaster in history occurred when a Japan Air Lines 747 crashed after the failure of an improperly performed repair caused the tail section to break away from the plane in flight. The jet continued to fly about half an hour before it crashed, killing 520 of the 524 people on board. No one died until the plane crashed, so everyone on board knew what fate had in store for them.

Several people wrote notes of farewell to their loved ones. One man wrote a loving note to his wife and put it in his jacket pocket. That man was a beloved Japanese singer, best known for the song “Ue o Muite Arukō,” released on the Japanese label Toshiba in 1961. The song took a rather unusual journey after its release.

It is well known that teenagers in the United Kingdom in the early sixties liked American music. Besides the R&B records of the 1950’s, there was another American music craze among English youth in the early 1960’s: Dixieland Jazz. This put the lines from Dire Straights’ “Sultans of Swing” (“They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playing Band. It ain’t what they call rock and roll”) into perspective. The Sultans were not playing some obscure music from half a century before, they were basically an oldies band playing a style that was popular almost two decades in the past and the crowd of young boys in the corner really didn’t care.

Richard Lester, the American movie director who directed the Beatles’ films “Hard Days Night” and “Help,” took his first step into the English youth/music genre in 1962 with a film called “It’s Trad, Dad,” a film about a teenage boy and girl trying to get support for a concert featuring Dixieland music.

One of the bands featured in the film was Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. Ball is known as a one-hit wonder in the United States for the 1962 hit “Midnight in Moscow.” In January, 1963, he had a top 10 hit in the UK with “Ue o Muite Arukō.” Inasmuch as Ball recorded the song as an instrumental, knowing the UK audience would not understand or be able to pronounce ue o muite arukō, and knowing the song was Japanese, the record company thought they would give it a Japanese name they thought people could pronounce: Suki Yaki.

About that time, Rich Osborn, a disc jockey at radio station KORD in Pasco, Washington, was given a copy of the 1961 Toshiba album. He played “Ue o Muite Arukō,” and it was very popular with listeners. Word of the song’s popularity grew. Pat O’Day started playing it on KJR, Seattle. O’Day told his friend, Canadian disk jockey Red Robinson, about the record and it became popular in Canada.

Capital Records licensed the recording and released it as a single, keeping with the name given by the UK label to the Ball record. To this day it is the only record sung entirely in Japanese to make it to number one on the American charts.

I have loved the record since it was a hit in 1963. While I remember many songs from when they were hits, there aren’t too many songs of which I have a specific memory of hearing on the radio back in the day; Sukiyaki is one of them. I remember being on a bus in Washington D.C. Someone in the back of the bus had a transistor radio and I strained to hear it over the noise.

I also have a little bit more of a connection to the song. About thirty years ago, a DJ on a Seattle oldies station told the history of the record and mentioned how Rich Osborn was credited with making it a hit in the west. In the mid 1980’s I worked with someone named Rich Osborn at a station in Seattle. I called the oldies DJ and asked if the Rich Osborn I knew and the Rich Osborn at KORD in Pasco in 1963 could have been the same person. The DJ did not know.

I tried for many years to find an answer to that question but all I could find were the same details I already knew. Finally, about two years ago I tried again. This time I had a Google hit of a Facebook post from someone who mentioned his friend Rich Osborn who was now retired. I messaged the person and asked. Yes, the Rich Osborn I knew and the Rich Osborn who was at KORD were the same person. No, I had nothing to do with making the song a hit, but the story is sentimental for me.

The Japanese singer, Kyu Sakimoto, never had another hit in the United States. But the one he did have is still loved today.