Takako Ueno (上野尊子, Ueno Takako; real name Takako Katayama, 片山尊子) was a Japanese jazz singer whose recorded work runs from an RCA album in 1977 to a final album in 2010. She has no official website, no published interview and no English or Japanese Wikipedia article. The account below rests on record-company catalogue pages, Discogs credits, an obituary by the Japanese jazz writer Makoto Goto that quotes the liner notes of two of her albums, and Wikipedia pages in German and Dutch. Some reference sites list her as born around 1950 and still living; the Japanese sources cited here say otherwise.

She was born on January 5 in Yokohama. Goto's obituary gives the year as 1936 and notes that 1939 is sometimes cited; Japanese Wikipedia's list of deaths for April 2011 also gives 1936, while a Japanese birthday database gives 1939. According to the obituary she made her professional debut at 19, singing at the Yokohama Seaside Club, and then sang for a long time in clubs for American servicemen. She became a student of the pianist and singer Minoru Matsuya (松谷穣), who also taught Nancy Umeki and Sawa Tamaki; the record company Camerata Tokyo names her among his pupils in the notes to his only album. In 1972, the obituary says, she moved to the United States and sang in New York and San Francisco, where she was reportedly coached by Dakota Staton and Betty Carter. How long she stayed and when she returned to Japan are not recorded in any source found.

Her first record was Good Morning Heartache, issued by RCA in Japan in 1977 (RVL-5512). It is a voice-and-piano album with Mitsuaki Kanno as the only accompanist: ten standards, from "God Bless the Child" and "My Foolish Heart" to "I Can't Get Started" and "It Might as Well Be Spring". Goto's obituary, drawing on the producer's liner notes, describes how it came about. Kanno introduced her to the record producer Hiroshi Isaka of Camerata Tokyo, who went to hear her at the Hamamatsu Grand Hotel. About three songs were first tried with a trio of Kanno, the bassist Isoo Fukui and the drummer Tetsujiro Obara, but the result sounded too much like her club singing, so Isaka changed the plan to piano alone, aimed at tired listeners who want something quiet to put on late at night with a drink. Ueno herself later recalled, in a conversation with the obituary's author, that reviews at the time praised Kanno's piano more than her singing. The album was reissued on CD in October 2006 as a paper-sleeve edition (RCA BVCJ-37527), one of ten titles in a series of Japanese jazz albums.

Kanno died on August 15, 1983, and on June 26 and 27, 1984 a group of Tokyo jazz players recorded a memorial concert for him at a venue called Alexander, released by Ing Record as 翳 菅野光亮追悼コンサート Live At Alexander (LM-1489). Ueno is credited with vocals on it, alongside a second singer, 鈴木博. The rhythm sections credited on the two sides include Masahiko Ozu on drums and Sadanori Nakamure on guitar on side A, and Tetsujiro Obara on drums on side B; Discogs does not say which tracks she sings.

Her best-documented album is Getting to Know You. It was recorded in Roppongi, Tokyo, on May 22, 1985 with the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto trio, which here means Yamamoto on piano, Tsutomu Okada on bass and Jo Jones Jr. on drums, plus Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone. It is nine standards, among them "A Foggy Day", "I've Got a Crush on You", "It Never Entered My Mind", "Midnight Sun" and "God Bless the Child". Tower Records Japan lists a first CD issue on Camerata in April 1988 (32CJ-2); Camerata Tokyo's own catalogue lists the Insights edition (25CJ-2) with a release date of November 21, 1994. The label's notes call her the strongest jazz vocalist in Japan, which is promotional language, but it shows the weight the company put behind the record. German Wikipedia, citing the magazine Coda in 1987, says the magazine called her an excellent singer with articulate phrasing and a deep, resonant voice.

In September 1993 she sang chorus on Matsuya's own album Younger Than Spring (Camerata, 25CJ-5), made when he was around 80 and issued in November 1994. Her next album under her own name, Close Your Eyes! (Insights 25CJ-14), was recorded in Tokyo in March 1997 and issued by Camerata Tokyo in November 1997 (retailers list it from May 1998). It is the most heavily staffed record of her career, with Hiromasa Suzuki and Takehiro Honda on piano, two bassists (坂井紅介 and 片山勝義), two drummers (Hiroshi Murakami and Motohiko Hino), the trumpeter 松島啓之, Uematsu again on tenor and the altoist 山田譲. Camerata's listing does not say which musicians play on which of its thirteen tracks. The repertoire runs from "Everything Happens to Me" and "At Last" to Horace Silver's "Song for My Father", Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" and Chick Corea's "High Wire".

The last decade is thinly documented but real. In December 2006 Aketa's Disk issued Live at JZ Brat by the singer チコ本田 (Chico Honda), on which Ueno is among the additional credited artists, with the saxophonist Kohsuke Mine also listed. In May 2007 she sang all ten tracks of the alto saxophonist Atsuo Shirai's first leader album, Swingin' Daddy (What'sNew Records, October 2007), from "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" to "Stardust". A video from February 2009 shows her singing "Love" at the Nagoya club Jazz Inn Lovely with a trio led by the bassist Tsutomu Okada, with Koji Goto on piano and Atsushi Kuroda on drums. Her final album, It's De-Lovely (JAZZIN, DDCZ-1658), came out on February 24, 2010: fourteen songs, from Cole Porter's title song and "Come Fly with Me" to "Smile" and "A Child Is Born", with her husband, the bassist Katsuyoshi Katayama, and the musicians 高浜和英 and 広瀬潤次. Tower Records Japan's product notes describe her as a great veteran of the jazz vocal world and say the bonus material includes unreleased recordings with the late Takehiro Honda, who had died in 2006.

Takako Ueno passed away on April 23, 2011, of multiple myeloma according to Goto's obituary, which was published that August and gives her age as 75. Japanese Wikipedia's list of deaths for that month records the same date. Beyond that, nothing is known of her life away from the stage. No date of birth is confirmed, no family beyond her husband is named in any source, and no photograph of her has been found under a free licence.

She should not be confused with namesakes. The guitarist Takashi Ueno (上野孝) of the Tokyo duo Tenniscoats is a different person, as is the author 上野貴子, who leads a haiku group.

Everything that can be said about her style comes from her repertoire and from other people's descriptions. She sang standards. Both Good Morning Heartache and Getting to Know You include "God Bless the Child", and the first takes its title from a song Billie Holiday recorded in 1946. Close Your Eyes! widens the repertoire to modern jazz writing by Horace Silver and Chick Corea, which Camerata's note describes as running from standards to modern jazz numbers.

Her voice is described by others rather than by herself. According to the obituary, Kanno told Isaka that her voice itself was jazz singing. German Wikipedia reports that Coda praised her phrasing and the depth of her voice. The producer's concept for her debut, as quoted in the obituary, was a late-night record with Kanno's piano and her voice and nothing else, for someone coming home tired; her own recollection, in the same obituary, was that critics preferred the piano to the singing on it.

Her training, as far as it is documented, was the Yokohama club circuit and the American military clubs, under the singer and pianist Minoru Matsuya, followed by the New York and San Francisco years in which she is reported to have been coached by Dakota Staton and Betty Carter. No source gives her own account of her influences.