Performed by the inimitable Carmen Maki in 1969, at the tender age of seventeen. Words by Shuji Terayama, music by Michi Tanaka, his secretary and confidante at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn7nHtUDsTs
Carmen’s first album contained eleven songs, all written by Terayama. The single sold over a million copies, making Terayama probably the only poet in the world to have a gold disc to his name. Here are the lyrics in English.
Sometimes like a motherless child
I want to gaze silently at the sea
Sometimes like a motherless child
I want to go on a journey alone
But my heart is always changing
If I was a motherless child
I couldn’t speak of love to anyone
Sometimes like a motherless child
I want to write a long letter to someone
Sometimes like a motherless child
I want to shout as loud as I can
But my heart is always changing
If I was a motherless child
I couldn’t speak of love to anyone
As you can see, Terayama’s song has little relation to the similarly-named American spiritual covered by artists ranging from Fats Waller to Boney M. During his lifetime he was sometimes accused of plagiarism and in this case too some critics were uncomfortable with the borrowing of such a familiar title. From a twentieth first century perspective, Terayama’s use of collage, allusion and sampling as an artistic technique is unproblematic and puts him ahead of his time.
Just one year later Carmen did record a blistering hard rock version of the old American spiritual. By this time she had jettisoned her hippy chanteuse persona and joined Blues Creation, featuring Japan’s answer to Jeff Beck, Kazuo Takeda on guitar.
GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES
Like Terayama himself, Carmen Maki was an outsider figure brought up in a fatherless home. Nonetheless she retained her father’s American nationality until the early 1990s, when she took up Japanese citizenship.
In 1968, the young Carmen dropped out of high school and travelled to Tokyo, where she was taken to a performance by Terayama’s underground theatre group, Tenjo Sajiki. Enthused by the experience, she soon joined the troupe and appeared in several Terayama pieces, before kicking off her career as a professional singer and song-writer.
Last year Carmen celebrated the 45th anniversary of her debut with the Good Times, Bad Times tour. You can buy the 3 CD retrospective collection here. We are happy to report that as of February 2015 she was in great form. The fire still burns.