An exercise in marketing

 

Marketing has been around as long as their has been a record industry - and, indeed, a lot longer than that. In fact, it might be argued that the successful launch of the recording industry was built on a masterful - and misleading - marketing campaign that claimed that the sound of an Edison cylinder was an accurate representation of real life (it was no such thing, but people were happy to be fooled). Over the subsequent decades, the various record companies and publishing companies went to ever greater lengths to market their works - with the latter, keen to secure as many recordings of a hit copyright as possible, often at odds with the former. Still, the joint campaign launched in late 1959 by the French branch of the EMI company, Pathé (also home to sub-labels Columbia and La Voix de son Maître (the French branch of UK label His Master's Voice) and publisher Chappelle was something of a bold masterstroke.

At its heart was a new French composition, "Salade de fruits", penned by jobbing songsmiths  Armand Canfora with Noël Roux in the vaguely "exotic" style that had been hugely popular in France during the second half of the fifties - a dash of overseas mystique (in this case from the Pacific) mixed in with an entertaining if unchallenging French lyric. This time though, rather than market it to one of the big French performers of the era - Dalida, say, or Gloria Lasso - and then, once it had become popular, racking up covers from across the musical spectrum (there had been 49 versions of Dalida's breakthrough hit, "Bambino", and no fewer than 91 of "Que sera, sera"), Chappelle hit upon an alternate strategy, aiming to flood the market from the first day of the campaign and instead entered into a deal with Pathé to have no fewer than six of the label's artistes record the song for simultaneous release.

Mathé Altéry was a soprano with a pleasing, mass market style perfect for the song, while Spanish exile Luis Mariano, star of numerous operettas was her closest male equivalent. Both were pressed into recording the song, although Mariano was dubious about the whole affair, wondering what the point was of so many performers simultaneously recording the same song. He relented when he realised that each would be able to display their own style on the song, bringing it to life in their own, very different ways. To complete the vocal versions, the label laid down renditions by Belgian musical hall and operetta star Annie Cordy - no stranger to novelty recordings - and actor, singer and funnyman Bourvil, with orchestra leaders Franck Pourcel (strings) and Georges Jouvin (brass) rounding out the sextet.

To complete the marketing package, the label commissioned a series of photographs of a young Tahitian girl (the "Salade de fruits" of the title) and used a different one on the sleeve of each of the performers' EP sleeves (EPs being the dominant French format of the time). With the delivery of actual fruit salads to radio stations and press outlets being the final masterstroke, the six versions hit the marketplace on the same day in November 1959. Luis Mariano's was first out of the box in terms of sales, reflecting his huge popularity at the time, before being overtaken by Annie Cordy's rendition, testifying to the essentially novelty appeal of the song.

In his excellent little book Ces chansons qui font l'histore, Bertrand Dicale rightly points out that, while each of the six releases contained a version of "Salade de fruits", the rest of the contents differed from one release to the other. Cordy's version (Columbia ESRF 1235) was accompanied by her covers of Lloyd Price's "(You've Got)  Personality" ("Personalités") and Paul Anka's revival of the spiritual "Down By The Riverside" ("Qu'il fait bon vivre"), with her take on Georges Guétary's "Ivanhoé" rounding out the quartet. By way of contrast, Mariano's release (La Voix de son Maître EGF 445) had his version of Frankie Vaughan's "The Heart Of A Man" ("Ma joie") alongside two songs of Spanish origin ("Soul le beau ciel de Rome" and "El fuego") while Altéry surrounded her reading (Pathé EG 457) with adaptations of three American songs ("Si près... si près", "La ville endormie" and "Vous m'éblouissez", adapted from "Nearest And Dearest", "Moonlight In Vermont" and "You Go To My Head"). 

Those who were around at the time recall Cordy's jolly rendition as scoring most of the radio play at the time and it was certainly popular enough to justify the making of a Scopitone promotional video to support it. As the only published chart at the time seems to have been the sheet music chart published in Le Figaro and in La Discographie Française, neither of which indicated which recorded versions were driving the sheet music sales, it is difficult to be certain which was the best selling version but certainly oldies radio has tended to favour Bourvil's rendition (Pathé EG 488) over Cordy's, and retrospectively compiled charts claiming to be based on record sales (such as those found at www.top-france.fr) seem to bear this out. It is also, in my experience, the easiest one to find in second hand shops today.

Those same charts also note the popularity of at least one of the two remaining versions - that by orchestra leader Franck Pourcel (La Voix de son Maître EGF 445), whose arrangement of The Platters' "Only You" had given him a surprise US top ten hit earlier in the year. Pourcel's string-swept style would be hugely popular for decades (in the late sixties, he would be a staple of EMI's Studio 2 series of stereo demonstration releases) and his long string of EPs and LPs were best sellers for years. "Salade de fruits" was no exception, and his easy listening rendition followed Cordy and Bourvil up the charts as 1960 got underway. By then, the song was sitting squarely at the top of the sheet music charts, although the aforementioned website suggests that it topped out at number two on the (non-published) record charts behind Édith Piaf's timeless "MIlord".

That left trumpeter Georges Jouvin's rendition (La Voix de son Maître EGF 445) as the runt of the litter, perhaps deservedly, given that he gave a Mexican-styled arrangement to a song ostensibly set in the South Pacific. Still, it would be churlish not to include it here, if only by way of comparison...

Inevitably, once the song became a hit, other artists scrambled for a piece of the action. The most notable was crooner Claude Robin (Vogue EPL 7735) but it was a pointless exercise as EMI had already cornered the market. A major triumph for marketing, the six versions blanketed shop windows, swamped the airwaves and kept the song high in the charts for many months, flying the flag for exotic pop songs even as a new young singer named Johnny Hallyday made his record debut in the spring. it remains - in the versions by Bourvil and Annie Cordy - a popular song to this day.

You can read more about the artists who recorded "Salade de fruits"  - and much more besides - in my newly-released book. Feel free to grab a copy here: BOOK