Tatsuro Yamashita
Profil: Singer-songwriter and producer, born 4 February 1953. Husband of Mariya Takeuchi. Heavily influenced by American jazz, soul & big band music, his first album, Add Some Music To Your Day, containing cover versions of songs by the Beach Boys and other golden age American songs, is now extremely rare & sought-after. His major debut came in 1976 with Circus Town, which was recorded in New York and Los Angeles, the former with the participation of famed conductor & arranger Charlie Calello.
His popular breakthrough came in 1980 with the release of Ride On Time, whose title track peaked at #3 on the Oricon singles chart and was used in a TV ad for Maxell audio cassettes featuring Yamashita. He is probably best-known for composing & performing his 1983 song \"Christmas Eve\", which appeared on his album Melodies that year and was notably covered by Pentatonix for the Japanese release of their That's Christmas To Me album.
He is also famous as record collector and the DJ of Japan's most famous oldies radio show called \"Tatsuro Yamashita's Sunday Songbook\" (TOKYO FM). This program started on October 3, 1992 as a Saturday Songbook, but changed to the Sunday Songbook on April 3, 1994. And it is a long run program that continues to date.
