Kazumasa Oda

Kazumasa Oda

Kazumasa Oda (小田和正, Oda Kazumasa) (born September 20, 1947 - ) is a Japanese singer-songwriter, also known as the leader for folk rock band Off Course.

As a vocalist and leader of Off Course, Oda wrote many Japanese standard numbers in 1970s and 1980s. He and Yasuhiro Suzuki (who left the band in 1982) were important composers in the band. Their most successful singles "Sayonara"(1979)"Yes-No"(1980) and "Kimi ga Uso o Tsuita"(1984) were written by Oda.

Since 1985, he began work as a solo musician. After the breakup of the band in 1989, he produced many hit singles as singer-songwriter, such as "Little Tokyo"(1989) "Itsuka Dokokade"(1992), "Tsutaetai Koto ga Arunda"(1997) and "Kirakira"(2002). His most successful single is "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" (1991), the theme song of Japanese TV drama Tokyo Love Story. It sold over 2,580,000 copies, and became eighth best-selling single in Japan.

In 21th century, he released three albums and all of them reached number one at Japanese official hit chart Oricon. . Above all, compilation album Jiko Best(2002) sold over 2,200,000 copies. Because of the most recent album Soukana (2005), he became the oldest solo music artist who reached number one at Oricon albums chart.

Role in Off Course

• Main article: Off Course

In 1970, Kazumasa Oda debuted as the members of The Off Course.

Solo career

In 1985, Oda collaborated with Yumi Matsutoya and Kazuo Zaitsu and released #1 hit single "Imadakara". It was mostly written by Matsutoya and Oda, and played by the former Sadistic Mika Band members. In same year, Oda began his own solo career. His first solo album K.Oda (1986) was produced by Oda and Grammy Award-winning recording engineer Bill Schnee, who was well-known for the works on Steely Dan, Olivia Newton-John, Boz Scaggs, Pablo Cruise, Huey Lewis and the News albums. Schnee was one of Oda's friend, and had also worked on Off Course albums. In his several 1980s and 1990s albums, Schnee had worked as engineer and mixer. His solo debut album was recorded by many influential musicians; Jeff Porcaro on drums, David Hungate on bass, Dann Huff on guitar and others.

Three years later from release of K.Oda, he released self-produced studio album Between the Word and Heart. Around that year, the work as Off Course was getting destroyed. One year after the dissolution of the band in 1989, he released third studio album Far East Cafe. In this album, Nathan East has performed bass guitar. but other instruments and chorus were mainly recorded by several Japanese musicians. The title of the album was also his management office name. In later year, he has run same-titled cafe.

In 1991, he wrote the theme song for Tokyo Love Story,the drama program which broadcast by Fuji Television. At first, he wrote the song called "Far East Club Band Song". But the producer Akira Ota refused that song and ordered Oda to wrote other song. Eventually, "Far East Club Band Song" has featured as theme song on other program. And instead of "Far East", he wrote "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni". On February 6 of same year, it was released as the double A-side single with "Oh!Yeah!"(It was used as the background music on TV advertisement of The Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company). The single sold nearly 2,600,000 copies and became best-selling compact disc in Japan at that time. At the stage now, it is eighth best-selling singles in Japan. Because of these succeeded tie-up, a lot of his song has used as theme song for advertisements, movies, and TV dramas in later years. After the hit of "Oh! Yeah!", Oda released same-titled first compilation album. Following the success of the single, this album sold over 1.5 million copies.

Album discography

Studio albums

• K.Oda (1986)
• Between the Word and the Heart (1988)
• Far East Café (1990)
• sometime somewhere (1992)
• My Home Town (1993)
• Looking Back (1996)
• Kojin Shugi (個人主義) (2000)
• Looking Back 2 (2001)
• Soukana: Soutaisei no Kanata (そうかな 相対性の彼方)(2005)

Compilation albums

• Oh! Yeah! (1991)
• Tsutaetai Koto ga Arunda (伝えたいことがあるんだ)(1997)
• Jiko Best (自己ベスト)(2002)

Notes and references

• Article of Kazumasa Oda on ja:wikipedia org

External link

• Kazumasa Oda Official Web Site Far East Cafe (Japanese)