Yoshiko Goto (後藤芳子) is a Tokyo-born jazz singer whose recorded career runs from a 1964 single to a 2009 studio album, with a run of mid-1970s LPs in the middle that put her next to some of the best-known names in Japanese jazz. She was born on February 21, 1933. Her name appears on record as Goto, Gotoh and, in Japanese order, Goto Yoshiko.

Her start was in the 1950s. The German and Dutch Wikipedia articles place her with the clarinetist Eiji Kitamura and Kiyoshi Yamaya in 1952, and a Japanese record dealer's biography says she joined Eiji Kitamura and the Rhythm Mates in that decade and sang with the Sharp Flats in the 1960s. The earliest items on her Discogs page are a 1961 flexi-disc anthology, Car & Jazz, and a 1964 Asahi Sonorama single on which Henry Robins and His Orchestra back her on "Washington Square" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." The German Wikipedia article, citing Ebony (October 1964) and Down Beat (1965), also says she performed in Japan with visiting American Dixieland musicians in 1964, toured the United States for the first time in 1967, and lived there from 1970 to 1972.

Her first album as a leader came in 1970. Yoshiko / This Girl's (Denon) was arranged by Masahiko Satoh, who also played piano, with Kiyoshi Sugimoto on guitar, Yasuo Arakawa on bass and Akira Ishikawa on drums. It is a set of the day's pop songs - "Something," "Scarborough Fair," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" - sung against a jazz quartet and bracketed by an opening and a closing theme. The same year she sang on Satoh's Toho album 火曜日の女 (Kayobi no Onna), alongside Sugimoto and Ishikawa.

The record that took her furthest from home was made in Hollywood. On April 20 and 21, 1972, she recorded Yoshiko Meets Ray Brown / I'm Glad There Is You at RCA's studio there, with the bassist Ray Brown as music director and arranger, Jimmy Rowles and Mike Wofford on piano, Paul Humphrey and John Guerin on drums, and Joe Pass on guitar on three tracks. In a 2005 interview quoted on a Japanese collector's site, she said Brown chose the musicians, that she had never met Pass before the date, and that when the full rhythm section overpowered her she asked to overdub her vocals, then took Brown's advice to sing live with the band instead. The album came out in Japan only; collectors date the original LP to December 1975, and Nippon Columbia later put it on streaming services.

Three Blind Mice and Columbia then gave her three albums in a single year. Day Dream (Three Blind Mice, TBM-40), cut on February 17 and 18, 1975 at Aoi Studio in Tokyo, billed her with the Takashi Mizuhashi Quartet: Mizuhashi on bass, Yoshio Otomo on alto saxophone, Junichiro Ohkuchi on piano and Hideo Sekine on drums. Gentle Rain (Columbia SP-7001), recorded in July, was a larger production, with Satoh arranging and supervising and playing piano, electric piano, synthesizer and electric organ, in front of a band that included Mizuhashi, Sugimoto, Masaru Imada on electric organ and Akira Miyazawa on saxophone and flute. A Touch of Love (Three Blind Mice, TBM-54), recorded on October 7 and 9, went the other way: just her voice with the guitarist Sadanori Nakamure and the bassist Kunimitsu Inaba, billed as the Inaba and Nakamure Duo, singing "Invitation," "My One and Only Love," "How Insensitive" and "We'll Be Together Again." The German Wikipedia article notes that William Minor's Jazz Journeys to Japan: The Heart Within (2004) discusses her phrasing on Day Dream critically.

On June 9, 1976, she shared the stage at ABC Kaikan Hall in Tokyo with Martha Miyake, and Bellwood issued the concert as What Is This Thing Called Life, billed to "Martha and Yoshiko." The band was Toshihiko Ogawa on piano and as music director, Masanaga Harada on bass, Donald Bailey on drums and Shigeo Suzuki on flute and saxophone, and the program mixed standards such as "When I Fall in Love" with pop songs like "You've Got a Friend" and "A Song for You."

Because (Trio Records, PAP-25007), recorded at Sound Inn in Tokyo on March 11 and 13, 1981, is the album most often reached for today. It strips the band down to three of the most distinctive players on the scene - Satoh on keyboards, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass and Masahiko Togashi on percussion - and moves from Gershwin's "S'Wonderful" to the Beatles' "Because," Jobim's "Dindi," Billie Holiday's "Don't Explain" and Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind." Hello followed in 1985 on Denon, recorded in Nippon Columbia's No. 2 Studio on June 26 and July 1 and 2 with Masao Yagi on piano, Nakamure on guitar and Mitsuaki Furuno on bass.

Her later records are sparser. A Beautiful Friendship (2000) is a CD of standards with the pianist George Gaffney, and For Your Lonely Heart (Impex, 2009) reunited her with Satoh as music director and pianist, Nakamure on guitar and Shinichi Kato on bass, recorded on June 12 and 13, 2009. She also appears on the Three Blind Mice compilation The TBM Sounds!. She has an official website, and its schedule listed a concert at Someday in Shinjuku, Tokyo, on August 15, 2024, with Satoh on piano, Akihiro Yamada on bass and a drummer named Ando.

Goto's repertoire is the Great American Songbook plus the pop songs of her moment, sung in English. The 1970 debut is nearly all pop, from the Bacharach songbook to the Simon and Garfunkel hit. By 1972 she was singing "Satin Doll," "But Beautiful," "Bye Bye Blackbird" and "Here's That Rainy Day" over a Los Angeles rhythm section, and on Day Dream and Because she works through ballad standards like "Angel Eyes," "Every Time We Say Goodbye," "Don't Explain" and "You Must Believe in Spring." The 1976 concert with Martha Miyake shows the same mix, with "You've Got a Friend" and "A Song for You" sitting beside "The Thrill Is Gone." The Dutch and German Wikipedia articles describe her repertoire in the same terms, pop hits of the day alongside jazz standards.

What changes from album to album is the setting. She sings with a small horn-led quartet on Day Dream, a studio band with brass and woodwinds on Gentle Rain, a guitar-bass duo on A Touch of Love, and a keyboard-percussion-bass trio on Because. The duo and trio records are the most exposed. Nakamure's countermelodic guitar lines and Inaba's bass leave her voice exposed on the Three Blind Mice album, and the Satoh-Ino-Togashi trio on Because plays with the space and freedom of players better known from free improvisation. A Japanese dealer's notes on Because single out the backing as outstanding and Togashi's drumming as especially rewarding to follow.