French Pop History

"  Any rock and roll fan worth his or her salt has heard of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. American songwriters and producers supreme, repsonsible for the biggest and best hits of the Drifters and the Coasters, creators of the soundtrack for Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock  and so much more...  The list of artists who have recorded their work is a very, very long one, but few fans would expect to find the name of Édith Piaf in the list. Yet there she is...and therein lies a story. In the early fifties, la môme Piaf  had established herself not only as the leading French music hall performer of the era but also as the international embodiment of French chanson , with a repertoire full of future standards such as "La vie en rose" (1948), "Hymne à l'amour" (1950), "Padam... padam" (1951) and "Bravo pour le clown" (1953). She was however spending increasing amounts of time abroad, principally in the United States, where she toured regular...

  It was one of the biggest global hits of the seventies. Breaking first in Canada as 1973 drew to a close, it swept across the United States and then spread over the globe to become one of the biggest hits of the decade. Milkmen (remember them?) whistled it and school children lifted their voices to join in the deathless refrain, "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun...". The song shifted millions of copies around the globe, bringing a fortune to its original creator, a Belgian songsmith who had long since hung up his songwriting pen to pursue, well, seasons in the sun... Jacques Brel had begun his recording career in 1953 with an underwhelming and commercially unsuccessful 78 rpm release for the Belgian branch of the Philips label (Philips P 19055). Neither "Il y a" nor "La foire" were particularly memorable, but there was something there that caught the ear of Parisian label boss (and chanson  champion) Jacques Canetti, who summoned the sin...