Golden Best 1 [Import]

Hibari Misora | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 21, 2004)
• Original Release Date: 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Sony Japan
• ASIN: B00004W3OW
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,123 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. (14 Tracks In Japanese)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Legend lives on..........., May 6, 2005

By 

Tradeand5 "tradeand5" (Planet Z) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Golden Best 1 (Audio CD)

The biggest shock hit heart of every Japanese people when the sad news spread the entire island....Now a long gone, but not forgotten Japanese legendary Enka singer Misora Hibari peaks at her best in these three volume album series. I have been looking for BEST sorted Albums, and I finally found one (Three), while EVERY and EACH of her album is excellent and can not go wrong anyways, this is a good start. You may never look any further after collectin three for generations to come, and for yourself.

If you are Japanese, then there is nothing more to say about this singer, if you are not, but has the deep soul, and appreciation for Japanese history, and culture, and its people, well, there you go. Be a part of Japan.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About Hibari Misora and the Track Listing for This CD, August 2, 2011

By 

RobE - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golden Best 1 (Audio CD)

A vocal child prodigy who was primarily raised in Yokohama, Hibari Misora (real name Kazue Kato) became the voice of Japan's resurrection out of the ashes of WWII. The closest analog in America with Hibari-san was Billie Holiday, though sans the drug use but with a somewhat similar rather unsettled personal life, as her delivery, which was marked by relatively low register, was imbued with a melancholy character that lent her performances emotional depth rarely heard by any singer anywhere. Indeed, she is thought to be the best singer of the 20th century in Japan and after one gets past Ms. Holiday, is perhaps the greatest vocalist of that time period from any nation.

The impact of her singing was further aided by an ability to deftly and intelligently get right to the emotional core of a tune and then transmit it effectively to the audience with little adornment or affectation.

While she is mostly known for doing enka songs (somewhat like to Japan what cry in your beer country songs are to the U.S.), she also ventured very successfully into both jazz and pop, displaying tremendous instinctual feel for those genres and exhibiting just what a great all around vocalist she was. The famous arranger and songwriter Masao Koga, in fact, once remarked that Misora could turn even the most mediocre material into gold, an accurate observation, in my humble opinion.

On this collection, you have a plethora of moods, be it the uptempo jauntiness of Minato-machi, 13 banchi and Kurumaya-san, the classic humorous but yet sad tale of a town burning down because the townsfolk were too preoccupied by a festival that was occurring at the time in Omatsuri Mambo, to the ballad Ringo Oiwake, where she uses an almost horn-like tonality in her voice that I have yet to hear from any other singer and it is very effective. All are chestnuts in the Misora songbook.

Unfortunately, she has passed on, as she was claimed by interstitial pneumonia at age 52. After news broke of her death, millions of fans rushed into record stores to buy copies of her albums, setting off what in the business there was called, "a Hibari boom," in the same way that Americans reacted when Elvis Presley and John Lennon died.

Since then, the question in the Japanese enka world has been who the new Hibari Misora would be in the same way that American rock critics used to wonder where the next Dylan or Beatles was coming from. Sachiko Kobayashi, another vocal prodigy, appeared to be that girl when she made her pro debut at age 10, but that never completely panned out as she has had an up and down career even though her voice is beyond perfect for the genre. I have a couple of theories as to why that is, but I won't go into them here.

The present candidate is Kumamoto Prefecture native Aya Shimazu, who is arguably the best non-classical singer in the world after Ann Wilson at present, but she hasn't really gotten anywhere near the level of popularity of Misora even if she has shown an ability to more than competently straddle genres as Hibari-san did. That may be due to enka gradually dying out in popularity as it has failed to really change in the way that country music in the states has become more like rock to sustain itself as a commercially viable genre. So with Misora leaving the scene, she may have also signaled that the height of the genre was past and even with great enka singers such as Harumi Miyako, Sayuri Ishikawa and Fuyumi Sakamoto still treading the boards, it is seeming to slide into irrelevance as things stand now.

1. Kanashiki Kuchibue
2. Tokyo Kid
3. Echigoshishi no Uta
4. Watashi ha Machi no Ko
5. Hibari no Hanauri Musume
6. Ano Oka Koete
7. Ringo Oiwake
8. Omatsuri Mambo
9. Hibari no Madorosu-san
10. Musume Sendo-san
11. Minato-machi 13-Banchi
13. Hanagasa Dochuu
14. Aishu Hatoba
15. Kurumaya-san

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Miss This!, June 30, 2001

By 

H. M Pyles (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Golden Best 1 (Audio CD)

If you like Judy Garland and Edith Piaf and would like to hear their expressiveness and musicality cast in an Oriental vein, try Hibari Misora. (Read a bit more about her in my review of Vol. 2 of this series.)