http://mrjyn.blogspot.com/2007/09/hitoshi-ueki-1927-2007-beloved-tojo.html ☆★☆ ★☆★ 1966 ハナ肇とクレージーキャッツ hana hajime with carzy cats banngai no ragu
Hitoshi Ueki: 1927-2007 Beloved Toho Comedian has Died Hajime and crazy cats, the jazz band of Japan, with name of the ad lib is funny renamed to the “crazy cats” from the variety program, where the short Abbreviation “crazy” comedian Hitoshi Ueki, whose films came to symbolize Japan’s collar, died of age 80.
The eternal salaryman, Ueki’s prolific output in both his solo films and those he made as the co-leader of the Crazy Cats comedy team were among Toho Studios’ most popular of the 1960s — in 1967 alone Ueki starred in three of Japan’s six top-grossing domestic films. Conversely, he remains all but unknown in America; in the U.S., the only Ueki film currently available on DVD is his least typical, a memorable supporting role as the pragmatic samurai General Fujimaki in Akira Kurosawa’s RAN (1985). Of his more than sixty film appearances several have sci-fi/fantasy elements and feature special effects directed by Eiji Tsuburaya and others, hence this tribute.
Ueki first found fame as a member of the Crazy Cats, a comic jazz band that was something like a combination of Spike Jones & His City Slickers and the Marx Bros., mixed with singularly Japanese postwar energy and humor. (It began as an Afro-Cuban band that found most of its early gigs on American army bases. The soldiers would tell them, “Hey, you’re crazy!” and they soon changed their name.)
co-founder Hajime Hana was a terrific drummer while Kei Tani (who took his stage name from Danny Kaye, thus in the Japanese last-name-first manner, Tani Kei) played the trombone. Others in the group included Hiroshi Inuzuka (string bass), Shin Yasuda (tenor sax), Senri Sakurai and Eitaro Ishibashi, both of whom played piano.
