He Didn't Touch a Piano Until He Was 22. Six Years Later, He Made a Reissue Classic.

r/JapaneseJazz

Ryo Fukui grew up nowhere near a conservatory. He picked up the accordion at 18, and it wasn't until 1970, at age 22, that he taught himself piano, working it out by ear against records by Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, and Bud Powell. No formal training, no teacher, just a turntable and stubbornness.

Six years later, on September 7, 1976, he walked into Yamaha Hall in Sapporo with a trio, bassist Satoshi Denpo and drummer Yoshinori Fukui, and recorded "Scenery." It barely registered in the US at the time, released into a jazz market that had mostly moved on. Decades later, it's one of the records the whole Japanese jazz reissue boom points back to, and "Early Summer" in particular gets cited constantly as the track that hooks new listeners.

He followed it a year later with "Mellow Dream" (1977), same trio, same Yamaha Hall, this time mixed at AOI Studios in Tokyo. Two albums in, and the arc could have stopped there. It didn't.

A Bebop Education, Decades In

In 1992, well into his own career, Fukui met American pianist Barry Harris on a trip to the US. Harris became his mentor, sharpening his bebop vocabulary and technique in a way self-teaching off records never could. It's not the usual mentorship story, a young player finding a master early. Fukui was 44, already a bandleader with two records behind him, still willing to be a student. Harris kept dedicating performances of "Fukai Aijo" to Fukui's memory for years afterward, right up until Harris's own passing in 2021.

The rest of the catalog is small but sharply drawn. "My Favorite Tune" (recorded June 4-5, 1994, released the following year) is a solo piano session, pressed privately in a run of just 1,000 copies and sold mostly at his own gigs. It's a real rarity now. "Ryo Fukui In New York" (recorded February 1999 at Avatar Recording Studios) put him in a trio with two American players, bassist Lisle Atkinson and drummer Leroy Williams, cutting standards on their own turf.

The Club He Built to Keep Playing In

In 1995, Fukui and his wife Yasuko opened Slowboat, a jazz club in Sapporo. It became a room where local players and touring musicians crossed paths, the kind of listening bar culture that's shaped Japan's jazz audience for decades. His final album, "A Letter from Slowboat" (2015), was recorded live there, trio with bassist Takumi Awaya and drummer Ittetsu Takemura.

Fukui was awarded the Sapporo Culture Encouragement Prize in 2012, recognition from the city that had been his home base the entire time. He passed away on March 15, 2016, at 67. Yasuko still runs Slowboat.

His records didn't slow down after that. "Scenery" in particular has kept climbing: a half-speed-mastered vinyl reissue from Switzerland's We Release Jazz in 2018 is now one of the most wanted pressings in the whole reissue scene, with 3,700-plus collectors keeping it on their want list and copies already sitting in nearly 13,000 collections on Discogs alone. A pianist who started from nothing at 22 ended up with a debut record that a new generation is still discovering.

Where to start listening:

• "Scenery" (1976), start with "Early Summer"
• "Mellow Dream" (1977) for the same trio a year on
• "A Letter from Slowboat" (2015) to hear him live in the room he built

Ryo Fukui at the piano. (Photo: ShahnazShahnaz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)