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Hideo Shiraki

Hideo Shiraki was a Japanese jazz drummer and bandleader, best known for his work in the 1950s and 1960s. Famed earlier on for hard bop, he later explored world music and became a pioneer of fusing traditional music forms with jazz structuring. Shiraki emerged in the new Japanese jazz scene of the 1950s that grew out of the influence of the US occupying forces. He studied percussion at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and, during this period, played with Masashi Nagao's Blue Coats. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, his quintet was popular in Japan and was associated with the "funky boom" craze for hard bop. Hidehiko "Sleepy" Matsumoto, Terumasa Hino and Yuzuru Sera all passed through his quintet. Notable albums include 1961's In Fiesta (Teichiku Japan), which included a version of Benny Golson's "Five Spot After Dark". Performers on the album included Hidehiko Matsumoto on tenor and flute and Yuzuru Sera on piano. 1965's Sakura Sakura united the quintet (including Terumasa Hino on trumpet) with three female koto players as Shiraki moved into a world jazz approach. An invited November 1965 performance at the Berlin Jazz Festival, organised by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, saw the quintet work with a koto quartet and was feted for mixing jazz with traditional Japanese music. He also played with Toshiko Akiyoshi, including two tracks on her 1961 album Toshiko Meets Her Old Pals.


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The Death of Hideo Shiraki

The Death of Hideo Shiraki

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Last week, I posted on Japanese drummer Hideo Shiraki, who died in 1972 at age 39. In 1962, Shiraki recorded two terrific albums, most notably Plays Horace Silver and Plays Bossa Nova. His other jazz albums are equally fabulous. Yet little is known about Shiraki in the States, since most information about him and his early death has appeared in Japan. In my post, I asked my Japanese readers for information on Shiraki. I received the following information: Paraphrased from ...

Recording

Hideo Shiraki Plays Silver

Hideo Shiraki Plays Silver

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Hideo Shiraki was a Japanese drummer who led a hard-bop quintet in Tokyo in the late 1950s and 1960s. Given Blue Note's strong distribution in Japan, Shiraki's group was widely popular there but not very well known here. In Sept. 1962, Shiraki recorded Hideo Shiraki Plays Horace Silver. The band, billed as the Hideo Quintet Plus One, featured  Naoya Omata (tp), Akira Fukuhara (vtb), Hidehiko “Sleepy" Matsumoto (ts,fl), Yuzuru Sera (p), Hachiro Kurita (b) and Hideo Shiraki (d). The arrangements ...

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