Hiroshi Satō

Hiroshi Sato (佐藤博, June 3, 1947 – October 24, 2012) was a Japanese singer-songwriter. He was an influential keyboardist in the Japanese jazz fusion and soft rock scenes during the late 1970s and 1980s, later dubbed "city pop".

Early life and career Sato was born as the eldest son of a temple family in his home town of Chiran in the Kagoshima Prefecture, and moved to Kyoto in 1949 at the age of two. At age 20 he began playing the piano, and later stated that "when I was 20 years old, I practiced so much that I was willing to give up the world if I didn't turn pro."

Around 1970, he started his career as a pianist in a jazz band in Osaka, eventually leading to his collaboration with other blues musicians such as the West Road Blues Band and Masaki Ueda, as well as folk musicians such as Kyozo Nishioka as part of "The Dylan", Masaji Otsuka and Ryo Kagawa.

In 1976, along with forming Shigeru Suzuki's short-lived band Huckleback and collaborating with Haruomi Hosono and his friends from Tin Pan Alley, he released his first solo album "SUPER MARKET" through Nippon Columbia.

In the late 1970s, Sato began experimenting with electronic music, collaborating a number of times with electronic pioneer Haruomi Hosono between 1975 and 1978. Sato incorporated electronic musical instruments including polyphonic synthesizers (such as the Yamaha CS-80 and Polymoog) and Roland drum machines in his 1979 album Orient. He was invited to join Hosono's electronic band Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978, but he declined as he decided to leave Japan in 1979 before returning in 1982. He experimented with the Roland TR-808 drum machine in the early 1980s, but decided to mainly use the Linn LM-1 sample-based drum machine for his 1982 album Awakening.

Sato was an early user of the Roland TR-909 drum machine, released in 1983. In 1984, he used the TR-909 for his album Sailing Blaster, and as a producer for Naomi Akimoto's album Poison 21.

He released 14 total albums up until his hiatus after "Oracle", which was released through Eastworld Records in 1996.

Discography Albums