Shizuko Kasagi

Japan's "Queen of Boogie" ("Bugi no Jo" - or "Buugi no Jou") in the postwar years. She was born in Kagawa on August 25, 1914, and scored her first success in a girls' opera company before the war. After the war, when American troops filled Japan's cities and their pop culture became the rage, Kasagi began recording jazz and boogie-woogie songs with an American sound but distinct Japanese subject matter. She became an instant star, and many other singers imitated her trademark, a sort of worldless growl/roar at the end of each song. Her best-known song outside Japan is probably "Jungle Boogie" ("Jianguru Bugi"), which she sings and Toshiro Mifune dances to in Kurosawa's Drunken Angel (1948). Bigger hits in Japan included "Tokyo Boogie" and "Shopping Boogie" ("Kaimono Bugi"), the latter of which she sang and acted to in a great short film that's easily seen on the web. She was a huge influence on the young Hibari Misora, who was originally billed as "the Baby Shizuko" before going on to become Japan's most popular singer. Kasagi didn't do as well surviving the end of the "Bugi-Ugi" craze and in 1957 gave up singing to concentrate on acting. She died in 1985, at the age of 70, of ovarian cancer.