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Artist
Hiroshi Sato
12+ albums
japancity popfunkpopJapanese City Pop
about
Sato (佐藤博) grew up the eldest son at a temple near the southernmost tip of Japan’s southernmost island, Kyushu. As a teenager, he sang Elvis Presley songs in the temple and spent his days recording music on an early multi-track recorder in the temple’s storeroom. A few years later, he moved to Kyoto, where he took up the bass guitar. At 20, he began teaching himself the piano, and shortly thereafter began playing with Masaki Ueda and other artists in the Kyoto area. Some of his earliest professional experience included working with Haruomi Hosono in Tin Pan Alley following Hosono’s departure from Happy End in 1974. In 1979, Sato released the album Orient, featuring Ueda, Hosono and other frequent collaborators. Hosono’s bassline can be heard on some of Orient’s strongest tracks. While Picnic is an iconic J-Funk track, it isn’t entirely representative of the album as a whole. On much of the album, the exotica influences from his work with Tin Pan Alley are evident. Flying Carpet, another track featuring Hosono, mixes the two styles well. Though Sato has a large catalog of solo work, he is probably best known in Japan for his contributions to the work of others as a keyboard player, composer, arranger, producer, and sound engineer. Tatsuro Yamashita considered him Japan’s best pianist, and Sato played keyboards on almost all of Yamashita’s work in the 70s and 80s, including seminal albums Spacy and For You. Sato contributed to much of Haruomi Hosono’s pre-YMO work during
