Collection: Hidefumi Toki

Hidefumi Toki grew up in Kobe, started at the Osaka College of Music, dropped out to join double bassist Isao Suzuki’s group as a teenager, made his professional debut at sixteen, joined Toshiyuki Miyama and New Herd in 1970, and was part of Terumasa Hino’s Quintet from 1972. By 1975 he had earned a recording session of his own on Three Blind Mice, Japan’s most prestigious jazz imprint of the era. “Toki” (TBM-46, 1975), his debut, featured Kazumi Watanabe on guitar, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass, and Steve Jackson on drums across five tracks: two originals, “Lullaby for the Girl” and “Darkness,” alongside readings of “When Sunny Gets Blue,” Ornette Coleman’s “Blues” and his own “Old Song Blues.” The alto and soprano saxophone playing throughout is, as the Light in the Attic reissue liner notes put it, expressive and raspy in a way that belongs to its moment without sounding dated. In 1978 he appeared on a session with Tommy Flanagan’s Super Jazz Trio for Baystate Records in New York. He performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979 with Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing. From the early 1980s he formed Toki and Samba, worked with guitarist June Yamagishi in ChickenShack from 1985, and sustained a parallel thirty-year career as a session musician for J-pop artists including Tatsuro Yamashita. He accumulated more than 400 recorded appearances and 30 leader albums. His daughter Asako Toki became a significant J-pop and city pop vocalist with her own long career. He died on June 26, 2021, aged 71.