Laila Kinnunen: Idän ja lännen tiet [From Russia with Love]

This song first appeared in the 1963 British movie “From Russia with Love”. Laila Kinnunen was the first Finnish singer who recorded it, suceeding very well accompanied only by a small orchestra. Above all, we can hear Kaarlo Reinikainen’s tasteful harmonica playing. Tämä laulu on alun perin brittielokuvasta ”From Russia with Love” (1963). Laila Kinnunen levytti sen ensimmäisenä Suomessa ja onnistui erittäin hyvin vain pienen orkesterin kanssa. Ennen kaikkea erottuu Kaarlo Reinikaisen maukas huuliharpunsoitto. * * * * Idän ja lännen tiet (The Roads to the East and West), originally From Russia with Love Sung by Laila Kinnunen Lyrics by Saukki (pen name of Sauvo Puhtila) Arranged and conducted by Jaakko Salo Recorded in 1964, Scandia Label, Helsinki, Finland Music and original lyrics by Lionel Bart (Lionel Begleiter) Photo: iStock (Val D’orcia, Italy) LAILA KINNUNEN (1939–2000) was an exceptionally skilled and versatile Finnish singer. Kinnunen was just 15 when she won a singing contest intended for adults with George Shearing’s “Lullaby of Birdland”. In 1957, at age 17, she recorded her first song, an Italian “Lazzarella” in Finnish. It was her breakthrough as a singer. Kinnunen mastered a wide range of popular music from American jazz and pop songs to Russian waltzes, and from Latin rhythms to Finnish tangos. She performed and recorded songs in more than 10 languages, including at least Finnish, Swedish (learned as a child evacuee in Sweden during WWII), English, Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Afrikaans, Hebrew, Japanese and Danish. She used many of them easily or perfectly. Kinnunen was brilliant in front of an audience and infallible in the recording studio. In the 1960s, Laila Kinnunen worked internationally, appearing in many TV programmes and performing in nightclubs all over Europe, such as Cannes, Leipzig, East and West Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Munich, Rostock, Sopot, Brussels, Zürich, Bucharest, Bratislava, Lisbon, Madrid and Granada. In her homeland, she also performed in many floor shows and played several roles in musicals and operettas. However, Kinnunen’s intensive and unique singing career ended early, at about age 30, due to her personal problems. During her career she recorded 160 songs with various record companies (mainly with Scandia), and many hundreds of soundtracks for television and movies. SAUVO PUHTILA (b. 1928) is one of the most eminent post-war lyricists today, both in terms of original lyrics and adaptations. His life’s work as a lyricist has been singularly complex and broad-ranging. Although he has produced a huge number of original lyrics, Puhtila is even better known and more esteemed for his adaptations, which his knowledge of languages has allowed him to produce from the originals written in various languages. He has adapted lyrics for operas, operettas, musicals, choir songs, solos, various hits, pop and rock songs and ditties, as well as gospel, Christmas, children’s and folk songs. Puhtila’s extensive production of original lyrics includes, for example, hits, ditties, songs for various representatives of Finland at the Eurovision Song Contest and songs for musicals, films, choirs, children and church services. His career extends from the 1950s to the 80s, and we can safely assume that Puhtila is the most productive lyricist in Finland, with the largest body of work and the broadest spectrum of genres. More than 2,500 of his lyrics have been released on disc, while the number of his individual lyrics is roughly double that. [He himself reported that he had written the lyrics to over 6,000 songs.] Sauvo Puhtila has always been – and continues to be today – highly regarded and respected among both experts and colleagues due to his superior technique and rich expression, as well as his unique style, which permeates his work throughout. (This article about Sauvo Puhtila is part of a wider article titled “Sauvo Puhtila receives Honorary Award for a life’s work”, and was published in issue 3/2002 of the Selvis magazine.) JAAKKO SALO (1930–2002) was a distinguished Finnish producer, composer, conductor, musician and arranger. Salo has had a great impact on the development of Finnish popular music. With his creative work, choices and guidance, he influenced the creation of some 9,000 recordings. He also created music for 44 films, about twenty revues and numerous entertainment programmes on television and restaurant shows. Salo wrote more than a thousand arrangements registered by the Finnish copyright organisation Teosto. As a composer, Salo was nowhere near as prolific: there are only 84 recorded tracks attributed to him. According to the statistics of Gramex, Salo participated as a musician in more than 2,500 recordings. (This article about Jaakko Salo is based on Juha Henriksson’s work “Musiikki: Jaakko Salo”, 2014.)