Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets ( ) is a Japanese

J-pop J-pop ( ja, ジェイポップ, ''jeipoppu''; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1 ...

-rock band, active from 1957.

History of the band

The band formed in 1957 just as The Blue Comets. In 1963 they renamed "Jackie Yoshikawa and the Blue Comets" with Jackie Yoshikawa serving as the leader of the group. Their debut single "Aoi Hitomi" ("Blue Eyes") was an immediate success, selling over 100,000 copies in its English-language version and over 500,000 copies in its Japanese-language version. Their major hit was the 1967 song "Blue Chateau" (ブルー・シャトウ, "Burū shatō"), which won a

Japan Record Award is a major music awards show, held annually in Japan that recognizes outstanding achievements in the Japan Composer's Association. Until 2005, the show aired on New Year's Eve, but has since aired every December 30 on TBS Japan at 6:30 P.M JST a ...

and sold over one million copies. Thanks to their popularity, they were the first musical group invited to participate in a ''

Kōhaku Uta Gassen , more commonly known simply as ''Kōhaku'', is an annual New Year's Eve television special produced by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. It is broadcast live simultaneously on television and radio, nationally and internationally by the NHK net ...

'' contest. Their last song to chart was "Ame no Hymn", which was released in January 1971 and reached the No. 65 on the

Oricon Chart , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nove ...

. In October 1971 Tadao Inoue, Kenji Takahashi, and Tsunaki Mihara left the group, replaced by new members. Tadao Inoue committed suicide by hanging in May 2000. The surviving members of the original line-up reunited in October 2001. The leader of the band Jackey Yoshikawa died in May 2020.

References

External links

* * * {{Authority control Japanese rock music groups Musical groups established in 1957