Three Years in an Organ Trio Inside a U.S. Air Base, Not a Pick in Sight, and a Debut Drummer Borrowed From Bill Evans

Guitarist Yoshiaki Miyanoue was born in Setagaya, Tokyo, on October 7, 1953. He started guitar at ten, heard Wes Montgomery in junior high, and took the lesson more literally than most: he has never used a pick, playing everything with his right thumb. His apprenticeship was unusually American for a Tokyo teenager — three years in an organ trio called the New Group at the NCO club inside the U.S. Air Force's Yokota base — followed by a 1977 trip to New York. Back home, on September 25, 1978, he cut Song for Wes for King's Seven Seas label with a borrowed drummer: Philly Joe Jones, who according to Japanese Wikipedia was in the country with Bill Evans's trio. The record includes a "Blues for Philly," presumably by way of thanks. Jimmy Smith later turned up on organ for Touch of Love (1981), and Miyanoue spent decades near the top of Swing Journal's guitar poll.