Rankin, Casey

Date of Death: January 2, 2009

Casey Rankin was born in the United States and has been living in Japan since 1971.

After beginning a distinguished career as a songwriter, studio bassist and recording/touring artist with TRUK in New York at ABC/Dunhill (Buddah records) Releasing "Plastic People" to much acclaim in 1967, then moving to California in 1970 to work with the capital records team Casey decided a short sabbatical was in order and came to Japan in 1971 where he began a one year intensive program of zen in a temple located in Yokohama.

In 1976, he recorded and released his first album in Japan with a band called [SHORT HOPE] the first project ever locally produced by an all non-Japanese band in the domestic market. The album was released by Polydor on the Kitty Records label. In 1978 Casey joined forces with Fujimaru Yoshino and started a band called [SHOGUN].
Casey's song and Shoguns first single "Otoko-tachi no Melody" sold well over 1,000,000 copies. The Shogun album went on to win the best album award, and Shogun was voted the best group. Casey received a number of awards as a writer and continues to be as prolific and productive to this day. Casey has released 30 albums to date in Japan, 8 of which have gone gold and 1 going platinum.

Since Shoguns semi-retirement Casey's range of writing has become more varied. He now spends quite a bit of time writing soundtracks for movies, animation films and TV commercial music as well as writing music for and producing a number of Japanese recording artists, as well as accumulating over 20 solo albums to boot. Casey continues to tour Japan and spends approximately 4 - 6 months a year touring Japan as well as the US and Europe.

Many of his TV commercial songs have become very popular throughout Japan. In particular, "I Believe in You" (All Nippon Air Lines TV CM theme), "Live is the Feeling" (Asahi Beer TV CM theme), "Met People" (Kirin Mets TV CM theme) "Wonda" (Asahi Can Coffee TV CM theme) and "Bad City" (aSapporo Can Coffee "JACK") are all well known and can be found, along with many of his TV Drama theme songs in most Karaoke systems in Japan.

Casey's song "Has Everyone Gone Blind" from his self-produced album was "The Reality Of Dreams" became the theme song for the "1995 International War & Peace Foundation", a sub-committee within the United Nations. The promotion video for "Has Everyone Gone Blind" was introduced to much acclaim during the United Nations Nuclear Proliferation Conference in September of 1998.

(Source: AniDB)