Osamu Kitajima - also known as Jack Alman plays every instrument in "Keiko Matsuoka Sings the Beatles"

2026

• Instrumentals & Demo Sessions: An archival release includes the original studio demo and instrumental sessions where Kitajima performed all the instrumental parts himself under the alias Jack Armand.   
• From the Osamu Kitajima Master Tapes Series

Few figures in Japanese music occupy as singular a position as Osamu Kitajima. A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer who had spent time in the UK in 1971 — where he was inspired in particular by The Beatles, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Syd Barrett — Kitajima returned to Japan carrying a deep and personal relationship with British rock and pop. After graduating from Keio University and establishing himself as a successful composer of TV and advertising jingles, he went on to record landmark albums such as Benzaiten (Island Records, 1974), blending progressive rock with traditional Japanese instrumentation. It was at the Jean-Jean Studio in Shibuya, Tokyo — a space he knew intimately, having recorded Benzaiten there — that the owner Takashima invited him to produce an album for one of his female singers. The result was Beatles Songs In Jean-Jean, a project that allowed Kitajima to channel his lifelong admiration for the Fab Four into a fully realised production vehicle.

Originally released in 1977 on CBS/Sony (catalogue number 25AH-276) as a Japan-only LP, Beatles Songs In Jean-Jean features vocalist Keiko Matsuoka — a singer who had already dedicated a series of albums to interpreting the Beatles catalogue, beginning with All You Need Is Love / Keiko Matsuoka Sings The Beatles Vol. 1 in the early 1970s. Here, under Kitajima's direction, the repertoire is reimagined with the warmth and studio ambition of the era: lush arrangements, meticulous production, and a sensibility that sits at the crossroads of Japanese pop craft and Western melodic songwriting. The album has long been prized by collectors of Japanese pressings, and this CD reissue by Super Fuji Discs — the Tokyo-based archival label dedicated to rescuing rare and essential titles from the Japanese underground and pop canon — makes it available to a wider audience for the first time.