Kazumasa Oda

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Kazumasa Oda
Kazumasa Oda on his solo first album K.Oda (1986)
Background information
Born	September 20, 1947 (1947-09-20) (age 60)
Origin	Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
Genre(s)	J-Pop Folk rock Adult Contemporary
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Years active	1970 - present
Associated acts	Off Course
Website	Official

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

As a vocalist and leader of Off Course, Oda wrote many Japanese standard numbers in the 70s and 80s. He and Yasuhiro Suzuki (who left the band in 1982) were important composers in the band. The group's most successful singles "Sayonara" (1979), "Yes-No" (1980), and "Kimi ga Uso o Tsuita" (1984) were written by Oda.

In 1985 he began work as a solo musician. 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 was "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" (1991), the theme song of a Japanese TV drama called Tokyo Love Story. It sold over 2,580,000 copies and became the eighth best-selling single in Japan.

In the 21st century, he released three albums and all of them reached number one on the official Japanese music chart, Oricon.^[1] Above all, compilation album Jiko Best (2002) sold over 2,200,000 copies.^[2][3][4] Because of the most recent album Soukana (2005), he became the oldest solo music artist who has reached number one on Oricon's album chart.^[5][6] In addition, because of the single "Kokoro" (2007), he became the oldest solo music artist who has reached number one on Oricon's single chart.^[7]

Contents 1 Music career 1.1 Role in Off Course 1.2 Solo career 2 Album discography 2.1 Studio albums 2.2 Compilation albums 3 Notes and references 4 External links

[edit] Music career

[edit] Role in Off Course

Main article: Off Course

In 1969 Kazumasa Oda debuted as one member of the folk duo The Off Course, later renamed to just Off Course, along with Yasuhiro Suzuki. This was the official start of Off Course, but Oda and Suzuki had actually been performing together since 1964, when they were juniors in high school.

The pair worked as a duo for their first six albums. Oda primarily handled keyboards and Suzuki guitars, with the two sharing songwriting and vocals.

For their seventh album, in 1979, Off Course added three new permanent members and moved to more of a pop/rock sound. Oda and Suzuki continued to provide the vast majority of the songwriting and lead vocals, with some minor contribution from the three new members.

After five albums as a five-man band, Suzuki left the group in 1982 to pursue a solo career. The remaining members continued on for four more albums, now with Oda as the clear leader and creative force in the band.

Off Course officially came to an end after their final concert on February 26, 1989.

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[edit] 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^[8][9] 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. He released third studio album Far East Cafe in 1989. In this album, Nathan East 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 write another song. Eventually, "Far East Club Band Song" was featured as theme song on another 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 songs were used as theme songs 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.

[edit] Album discography

[edit] 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, Kojin Shugi^?) (2000)
• Looking Back 2 (2001)
• Soukana: Soutaisei no Kanata (そうかな 相対性の彼方, Soukana: Soutaisei no Kanata^?)(2005)

[edit] Compilation albums

• Oh! Yeah! (1991)
• Tsutaetai Koto ga Arunda (伝えたいことがあるんだ, Tsutaetai Koto ga Arunda^?)(1997)
• Jiko Best (自己ベスト, Jiko Best^?)(2002)
• Jiko Best 2 (自己ベスト-2, Jiko Best 2^?)(2007)

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

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