Izumi Kobayashi: Coconuts High (1981)

What is it today? Over here, in the U.S. it’s the Friday just before Memorial Day, a long holiday weekend. Yes, it’s that time of the year when our minds turn to summer — and at least my mind — it turns to music that’s even brighter, funkier, perhaps, something more suited for the weather. Izumi Kobayashi’s music never quite hits me as perfectly as it does, than it does now, for that reason. Coconuts High rivals another release (one of entirely different flavor) as my favorite work from Mimi, but I’d be hard-pressed to find many other Japanese releases which rival her work here in going hard in the groove department.

In 1957, Izumi “Mimi” Kobayashi was born and raised in the seaside city of Funabashi located in Chiba, Japan. Before Izumi launched her musical career she was mostly known as a prodigious piano player. While attending the Tokyo College of Music, Izumi formed a group called Asoca and won Yamaha’s prestigious Grand Prix songwriting contest in 1977, landing on a record contract in doing so. Going under the name Mimie-Chan Super Band, CBS Sony released her first EP (My Summer Samba).

Just months later, Izumi would rebrand her group as the Izumi Kobayashi & Flying Mimi Band and release two wicked funk-influenced albums that showed Izumi’s own interest in latin and soul music. Buoyed by the likes of future Mariah members — Yasuaki Shimizu on sax and Mario Watanabe on bass — songs like “ハロー・ハロー・ハロー” and albums like Sea Flight and Orange Sky – Endless Summer seem to perfectly slot into that magical, summer vibes found in the soul jazz music of American musicians like Bobbi Humphrey and the Mizell Brothers.

Still in college, Izumi would take a sabbatical from the limelight, and for two years join other bands to better hone her own creativity. In Parachute, Izumi would translate her technique into the more contemporary electro-soul being heard/made overseas. Either as lead vocoder singer or arranger, Parachute’s debut, From Asian Port signals that kind of inbetween music Izumi was really more intent on going after. Not quite electro, disco, funk, jazz, AOR, or latin, it had all sorts of technological tricks to make it uniquely of a Japanese creation. Leaving the band after a year, Izumi would join Masayoshi Takanaka’s as keyboardist for a far too weak-sauce, sub-Santana-like, band. Thankfully, things would turn around for Izumi.

Izumi would finally find personal success after composing and arranging music (both full-fledged songs and BGM) for the anime Urusei Yatsura. A placeholder for the kind of sound she would explore in Coconuts High, Urusei Yatsura saw Izumi turn her eye more intently on the music of the tropics. Very light, very askew and very electronic — reggae, calypso, and other things met her prismatic talent. Finally, dropping down a level, in artistic pressure, she signed with Kitty Records and gathered up a brilliant supporting crew to fully flesh out her most wicked of visions.

Released under own name, Izumi Kobayashi’s Coconuts High would feature heavy hitters like Pecker (fresh of his own similar-minded, groundbreaking debut), Freddie Washington, backup vocals from sophisticated L.A.-soul group The Waters, and right off their eye-opening work with Angela Bofill (the spiritual distant cousin, Something About You), the incomparable horns of the Tower of Power and a “listenable” Mr. Takanaka on guitar. I could dig deeper, peer at the likes of Alex Acuña and ex-Patrice Rushen session guitar Paul Jackson Jr. Those would be the likes that would help her create the more overtly funk and latin funk gems, like “Palm St.”, “Small Dynamite” and the title track, you’ll hear in Coconuts High. Unaccredited, though, would be the Belizean reggae band Babylonian Warriors.

While recording in L.A., with all this murderer’s row of musicians, Izumi hit upon the Babylon Warriors opening for UB40 at the Roxy. Attracted to their roots style, Izumi asked them to help recreate/refashion “Crazy Love” a track completed as a tropical-tinged electro-boogie into a dubbed-out version they’d call “Lazy Love”. “Small Dynamite” would have been the perfect nickname for Izumi, since every track featured her finally coming into her own as both singer and composer.

Eight tracks all perfectly formed, all perfectly made for a summer outing, Coconuts High is quite simply a monster jam of an album. Sometimes I think the title covertly references a huge influence (the panoramic tropical soul of King Creole and his Coconuts) but then I realize August Darnell’s world was just one bit of the spheres orbiting many a Japanese cycles back then. For now, lay back and enjoy the music — rest assured this isn’t the last time we’ll hear of Mimi.

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