Moyes' Monday Musical Musings
I started this
post on Monday, November 11, 2024. I am just now, evening November 15, getting
around to posting it.
Del Shannon’s debut single, ‘Runaway,’ written by Shannon and keyboardist Max Crook, released on my mother’s 52nd birthday, February 18, 1961, was a major international hit topping the Billboard charts for four consecutive weeks ending the year as the number five song for 1961. It was also one of my favorite songs through my early teen years. The song has been covered by The Lawrence Welk Orchestra, Elvis Presley, Bonnie Raitt, the Traveling Wilburys, and many others. Del Shannon re-recorded ‘Runaway’ in 1967, 1986, and 1987 (recorded live on the David Letterman Show with Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band. It was used in American Graffiti in 1973 and in Good Will Hunting and Eddie and the Cruisers. Shannon’s 1987 remake was used as the opening theme for the Crime Story television series, and in Dexter: New Blood on Showtime. Tom Petty mentions the song in Runnin’ Down a Dream, as does the group Barenaked Ladies in When You Dream. Genesis sampled a bar in their song In the Cage.
While listening to ‘Runaway’ tonight, I was struck by the similarity in the message with that in the lyrics of another very popular song from the 1960s that I continue to enjoy very much: ‘Sukiyaki’ (U.S. title) or ‘Ue o Muite Arukō,’ by Kyu Sakamoto. While the musical styles are very different, there is a similarity in the feeling they present the listeners, along with the message of the lyrics, although I find ‘Sukiyaki’ to be more authentically melancholy.
Compare the lyrics, below, or even better, listen to them on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ttpzuzkD6NQ?si=Fb5VwUViiUkTBWFW and
https://youtu.be/C35DrtPlUbc?si=xi1x5s2yWPC0eTgZ .
‘Ue o Muite Arukō’ is sung in Japanese on this YouTube version, but the English lyrics are displayed to read.
Like ‘Runaway,’ ‘Sukiyaki’ was released in its home country in 1961. For ‘Ue o Muite Arukō,’ that country was Japan. It didn’t hit the U.S. market re-titled ‘Sukiyaki’ until 1963. It quickly became an international chart-topper, spending three weeks in the number one spot on the American Billboard Charts in June of 1963, and eventually one of the best-selling singles of all time, selling over 13 million copies. NASA used an instrumental version as mood music for the astronauts aboard the Gemini VII spacecraft, making the song the first known piece of human music played in space. It has been the subject of a Google Doodle. Credit for ‘Sukiyaki’ goes to composer Hachidai Nakamura and lyricist Rokusuke Ei. The song has been remade or covered by numerous artists, with the January 1981 single release by U.S. group A Taste of Honey reaching number one on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and number three on the Billboard Hot 100.
Lyrics,
Runaway (https://genius.com/Del-shannon-runaway-lyrics)
[Verse]
As I walk along I wonder
A-what went wrong with our love
A love that was so strong
And as I still walk on
I think of the things we've done together
A-while our hearts were young
[Chorus]
I'm a-walkin' in the rain
Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain
A-wishin' you were here by me
To end this misery and I wonder
I wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder, why
Why, why, why, why, why she ran away
And I wonder a-where she will stay-ay
My little runaway, a-run, run, run, run, runaway
Lyrics, Sukiyaki (https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kyusakamoto/sukiyakiuewomuitearukou.html) Note: This translation of the lyrics is slightly
different than those displayed on YouTube.
I look up while I walk
So the tears won't fall
Remembering those spring days
But tonight I'm all alone
I look up while I walk
Counting the stars with teary eyes
Remembering those summer days
But tonight I'm all alone
Happiness lies beyond the clouds
Happiness lies above the sky
I look up while I walk
So the tears won't fall
I cry while I walk
For I am alone tonight
Remembering those autumn days
But tonight, I'm all alone
Sadness hides in the shadow of the stars
Sadness hides in the shadow of the moon
I look up while I walk
So the tears won't fall
My heart is filled with sorrow
For tonight I am alone
For tonight I am alone
Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ is also renowned in the music industry
for the first use of the very distinctive sound of the electronic instrument
called the Musitron, an instrument created and played by co-author Crook. The
very unusual piercing and crescendoing sound of the Musitron is very obvious in
the song’s bridge between verse and chorus.
‘Sukiyaki’ is renowned for being the first Japanese song to do well with American audiences since before World War II. In 1963 we were less than 20 years from the end of that horrendous struggle which cost many lives and much wealth. Americans were still sensitive. ‘Sukiyaki’ came to our shores at the same time that Japanese electronics and automobiles were being newly introduced. The cars and the electronics became well accepted within a relatively short time, primarily due to the value they offered. ‘Sukiyaki’ remained the only Japanese hit to have reached the American Billboard list for several decades. I find this fact ironic, as Rokusuke Ei did not write the lyrics as a lost love song, as it seems. Rather, it was to express his sadness over U.S. domination of Japan in the early 1960s. He actually first put the lyrics to voice while walking home (in the rain) from a student demonstration against the American presence in Japan.
References from which I have heavily borrowed for these musings:
Medium. (2019). Medium. http://medium.com,
“Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’
and the Mystifying Sound of the Musitron, Excerpt from ‘200 Greatest 60s Rock
Songs’’, Edgar Street Books as published in The Riff.
Www.azlyrics.com. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kyusakamoto/sukiyakiuewomuitearukou.html
Wikipedia. (2014). Wikipedia.com. http://wikipedia.com
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