The translation is uncredited. Presumably it was done by someone in Alfa's camp, since it appears in the description of a video on Alfa's channel — if you're the translator and happen to see this, give me a shout, I could use some tips! And I'd like to credit you by name.
The song is the magnificent Wandering, better known (if it's known at all) as Horo or Hourou, music and words by Haruomi Hosono, but recorded by his Apryl Fool bandmate and erstwhile Sayama next-door-neighbor, Chu Kosaka. I heard it first on the absolutely stunning and perfect and gorgeous and and and (superlatives fail me) first disc of the 20th Century Box (aka The Pops of Haruomi Hosono), which should be required listening for every Hosono fan (the whole box, not just the first disc!). It is utterly wonderful.
The album that this song opens, 1975's Horo, is a secret Hosono album. I mean, it's not all that secret, since Hosono produced it and Caramel Mama is the backing band. But it's most of the way to a Hosono Album That Never Was.
What happened is, after Hosono House came out — and really, all throughout the Caramel Mama / Tin Pan Alley era — the genres that Hosono gravitated to were funk and soul (see, for instance, the just-reissued, Hosono-produced Linda Carriere record). In fact, Hosono wanted the follow-up to Hosono House to be really heavy on precisely those genres. He wrote several songs in the funk and soul vein, but when he tried recording them, he discovered (or decided) that his voice didn't suit the material. He scrapped the album, feeling deeply disappointed, and for a while had no idea where to take his career next.
Eventually the whole Tropical Dandy thing happened, and he was off on his next big adventure, but even as he was making that legendary Trilogy, every time he picked up a bass guitar, it was funk riffs he would play.
But Hosono didn't abandon the funk album dream, he simply outsourced it. He felt that Kosaka's voice would succeed where his own had failed.
And so we have Horo, the album. Of its nine tracks, two are new Hosono originals, another two are new Hosono/Matsumoto originals (!!!) (one of which is a musical rewrite of a song from the Apryl Fool record and simultaneously a lyrical rewrite of unrecorded Takashi lyrics originally set to music by Shigeru Suzuki), two are remakes of songs from Happy End's last record (one Hosono, one Suzuki), one is a remake of a song from Kosaka's first album, one is a co-write between Kosaka and his wife Eika Koh, and one is an early Akiko Yano song (!).
It's fun to imagine what the Hosono funk album would have looked like if its maker hadn't lost his nerve. For the most part, I think it would've looked just like Horo; but the two Kosaka songs and the Yano could have been swapped out for three other Hosono-penned candidates that appear on the 20th Century Box, all recorded around the same time: A Battle without Honor or Humanity (another Takashi co-write, gifted to Hiroshi Kamayatsu), The Invisible World (a song Hosono wrote in high school, gifted to Akiko Wada), and Bye Bye Baby (gifted to Makoto Kubota for Hawaii Champroo, one of a couple sister albums to Tropical Dandy; see also Eiichi Ohtaki's Niagara Moon).
By the way, note the elegant sequencing: Horo opens with Wandering and ends with The Wanderer.
:::
[anonymous translation, not mine]
I like rhythm and blues at this tempo
because I can dance while I sing.
These well worn tattered shoes
begin to dance on their own.
I like this kind of rhythm and blues
because I can dance while I sing.
These well worn tattered shoes
begin to walk on their own.
Now I wander, always wander,
wander far away.
I like rhythm and blues at this tempo
because I can dance while I sing.
These well worn tattered shoes
begin to dance on their own.
Now I wander, always wander,
wander far away.
(Back to: List of Translations)
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