🇯🇵 JAPAN IMPORT 🇯🇵 Yamamoto, Tsuyoshi Trio - Misty

This album has been added to 2 public lists:

• 

  On Vinyl

  Greg

  • Root Genre: Jazz
  • Primary Branch: Hard Bop / Piano Trio Jazz
  • Secondary Influences: Blues, Swing, Standards / Great American Songbook
  • Textural Identity: Acoustic, warm and highly tactile — piano, upright bass and drums captured with exceptional immediacy and room presence, very much in the classic Three Blind Mice audiophile aesthetic
  • Energy Axis: Medium → High (alternates lyrical ballad playing with strong swing and more muscular blues-driven passages)

  Misty is a classic Jazz piano-trio recording: Tsuyoshi Yamamoto on piano, Isoo Fukui on bass and Tetsujiro Obara on drums, recorded at AOI Studio in Tokyo on August 7, 1974. The repertoire is largely standards — “Misty,” “Yesterdays,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Angel Eyes” — but the trio plays them with much more rhythmic weight than the easy-listening title might suggest. :chatgpt-content-reference{index=“0”}

  I’d call the branch Hard Bop / Piano Trio Jazz rather than fusion, even though AllMusic rather oddly tags the album as Fusion. The actual sound is firmly acoustic and rooted in swing, blues phrasing and the classic piano-trio tradition. Your 2024 MHJL 307 edition is the Japanese 180g reissue on Three Blind Mice. :chatgpt-content-reference{index=“1″}

  Small review: Misty is one of those records where the performance and the recording quality are almost equally important. Yamamoto plays with a wonderfully percussive touch: lyrical when the material calls for it, but capable of digging hard into the keyboard when the trio starts to swing. “Misty” itself is spacious and romantic without becoming syrupy, while “Blues” and “Honeysuckle Rose” show the trio’s much more muscular side. Fukui’s bass is unusually present and physical, and Obara’s drums have that vivid, almost startling attack for which Three Blind Mice became famous. It is accessible, beautifully recorded jazz that still has real bite.

  Collection shorthand: Jazz → Hard Bop / Piano Trio Jazz.

• 

  2026 Discovery

  Greg

  Discovered via HHV. #vinyl

  • Root Genre: Jazz
  • Primary Branch: Post-Bop / Piano Trio Tradition (TBM School)
  • Secondary Influences: Standards Tradition, Blues, Modal Jazz (light touches)
  • Textural Identity: Acoustic, intimate, highly dynamic, audiophile-grade clarity (Three Blind Mice signature sound)
  • Energy Axis: Low → Medium (primarily restrained, late-night introspection with occasional dynamic lifts)

  Misty by Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio is one of the defining records of the Japanese Three Blind Mice catalog—arguably even more intimate and mood-driven than Midnight Sugar. The album leans heavily on jazz standards (including the iconic “Misty”), but what elevates it is the trio’s sensitivity: Yamamoto’s touch is lyrical and spacious, the interplay is subtle rather than virtuosic for its own sake, and the recording captures every microdynamic with stunning realism. This sits firmly in the “late-night jazz / audiophile listening” lane—music that prioritizes tone, atmosphere, and emotional nuance over complexity or experimentation.