Who says girls can't sing rock 'n' roll?

 

The French music industry of the fifties - as elsewhere - was as full of chanteuses as it was chanteurs. True - most (but not all) of the musicians, songwriters and producers were men, as they were in thne rest of the world, but French music halls and cabarets had always been as open to the female voice as they had to male performers. Indeed, it was not uncommon for male singer-songwriters to make their initial breakthroughs thanks to the women who chose to sing their wares. This tradition went way back - think of the partnership between Rip and Jeanne Aubert in the twenties - and even recently emerged stars like Léo Ferré, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel owed their start to the support of Catherine Sauvage, Patachou and Juliete Gréco respectively. Rock 'n' roll though, was something else.

When the new wave of teenage music first hit France, it was seen as just a fad and ripe for covering by music hall and cabaret performers, men and women alike. The results were, well, just what one might expect, although probably no worse than some of the whitebread efforts churned out by established stars in the US (Georgia Gibbs? Teresa Brewer?), although generally the men came off better than the women. However, as these bandwagon-jumping efforts were swept away and replaced by the real thing, the women got pushed to one side. Virtually all the front line rockers pouring out of America were young, testosterone-fuelled men and rock 'n' roll was seen pretty much everywhere as a boy's game (the pioneering works of Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker notwithstanding). So it would be in France, where all of the early running was made by young men, from the wild and uninhibited Johnny Hallyday to the smooth and polished Richard Anthony. What place in this new world for the girls?

Aside from the likes of Dalida and Petula Clark, both of whom were fairly comfortable with rhythmic music, few of the established stars could cut the mustard. There were however a few chanteuses from the jazzy side of the tracks who proved able and willing enough to make the effort. Foremost among them was Nicole Croisille, who slipped a cover of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" ("Dieu merci, il m'aime aussi") onto her debut EP in 1961. The rest of her repertoire was pretty much jazz, although she returned to Brother Ray for her third release, which featured a cover of his "This Little Girl Of Mine" ("Tout ça dépend du gars!") alongside a nice version of Teddy Randazzo's "Let The Sunshine In" ("Laisse entrer le ciel"). She had the vocal chops but none of this was really rock 'n' roll.

1960 and the early months of 1961 had seen a number of rock 'n' roll-styled records released in France by female singers but none of them came anywhere near the noise being whipped up by, say, Johnny Hallyday or the newly-emerged group, Les Chaussettes Noires. That changed in April 1961 with the debut release of the Hungarian-born Hédika. 

The backings were still a little too jazzy, played by musicians who turned their noses up at rock 'n' roll (even Johnny Hallyday had this problem) but Hédika overcame these limitations to come tearing out of the blocks. A cover of Neil Sedaka's "The Diary" ("Journal intime") seemed designed to put her in a box marked "girl singer" but elsewhere she busted forcefully out of this straightjacket, squealing and hollering her way through Chubby Checker's "Pony Time" ("Hey pony") and more than holding her own on a version of Elvis Presley's "Shopping Around" ("Il ne veut plus être un drageur"). The latter was also on the market by rock 'n' roll outfit Danny Boy et ses Pénitents but Hédika was far from embarrassed by the competition. 

She took on the Pénitents again on her second EP with the squealing, horn-driven (and very silly) "Croque la pomme" while the backings on "L'amour c'est tout ou rien" (a cover of Carl Dobkins Junior's "Love Is Everything") were a definite cut above the usual standard for the time, allowing her to send her high pitched vocals soaring over the the top. On stage, too, Hédika was very much the wild child that her records suggested she was, ripping up a storm and daring the boys to match her for excitement. A live performance from November 1961 catches her in all her glory, clad in a lamé jumpsuit as she shimmies around the stage, bringing life to an admittedly ordinary song that didn't deserve such a vibrant performer. 

For all her talents though, Hédika couldn't shift records in any kind of quantity. Perhaps the market wasn't ready to accept such an unihibited performer - at least, not a female one (Vince Taylor had no such problems). Perhaps going out in public in a jumpsuit was a step too far at a time when dresses and skirts remained the norm. Whatever the case, after just eight recordings pressed up on two EPs, Hédika slipped away, never to record again. 

Gélou wore trousers too, and went even further, cutting her hair short and forming her own rock 'n' roll band, Le Machiavel Rock. Born Geneviève Cognet and not to be confused with the similarly-named Spanish performer Gelu, she had cut a pair of fairly ordinary and very traditional EPs in the late fifties before being bitten by the rock 'n' roll bug. Her first EP in her new incarnation stuck to French compositions, highlighted by Henri Salvador's mock-spiritual "Donne, donne, donne" but despite strutting its stuff under the title Rockin' Gélou, it didn't quite live up to its name. Her second raised standards considerably on "Salome", a revival of an Austrian song that was currently doing the business in the UK for Petula Clark as "Romeo", although Gélou's version would be knocked out of the running when Clark cut her own version in French at the end of the year as "Roméo". She had the talent but an unsympathetic producer meant that Gélou was always a better propostion on stage than on record, where the bizarre rock-tango hybrid "Arrête-toi où l'on danse" did little to highlight her abilities. Her third EP was much better, despite a "fake-live" ambience, allowing her to groove her way attractively around the mid-tempo "Dieu m'a faite pour toi" while she finally got the chance to cut loose on the rapid-fire "Ils croient à leur danse", an arse-kicking recording that might have owed to too much to Ray Charles' version of "I'm Moving On" but was none the worse for that.

Gélou continued recording through 1962, landing a minor hit with a cover of Ray Charles' "Unchain My Heart" ("Délivre-moi") that lost out on the sales to a rival cover by Richard Anthony before her career ground to a halt. As with Hédika, her style was too upfront, too, well, masculine to survive in the French marketplace of the early sixties. She would return to action under her real name in 1965 with a trio of self-penned EPs, her hair now at a length unlikely to spook the marketplace, but nobody was really interested. Ahead of her time, Gélou slipped quietly into the history books as the sixties drew to a close.

Nicole Paquin brought a bit more femininity back into the game, at least in so far as a willingness to wear a dress on the cover photo of her first EP. There was little hint of that though in the Scopitone clip filmed to promote the release, which saw her fronting the band to the manner born, sliding around the stage as she delivered her take on Elvis Presley's "Stuck On You" ("Comme un clou") in a mixture of squeals and hollers. Her take on Bobby Rydell's "Good Time Baby" ("Allons dans le bois") was equally strong, although it veered off in to the yé-yé terrritory then being mapped out by Gillian HIls (who also recorded it) while "Dis-lui que je l'aime" (Bobby Darin's "Somebody To Love") was equally on-the-nail, her voice soaring up to the skies on the chorus in a cute and appealing fashion. 

Once again though, the record was little more than a cult hit, with Paquin's performances failing to hit home with an audience only just getting used to Elvis. She tried again with a second EP that rang the bell with the excellent "Mon mari c'est Frankenstein" (adapted from an obscure early Phil Spector production, "You Can Get Him - Frankenstein" by The Castle Kings). Once again, the Scopitone allowed her to show what she had to offer - twisting away to a rocking beat while clad once again in trousers. Quite what the country's moral guardians made of her is unsure, although as she had earlier (before her first record) shocked television viewers by appearing nude (from behind) for a total of fifteen seconds in the telefim L'exécution, perhaps they were prepared for anything. 

Paquin certainly had the chops, but despite the quality of her records, the breaks never came. She walked away from the music industry in 1962 to become a journalist, although she returned for one final, unremarkable EP in the mid-sixties. Like Gélou and Hédika, she was more than capable but she was in the wrong place and at the wrong time. So too was perhaps the best of the early rockeuses - Belgian singer and guitarist Jackie Seven. 

Signed to Vogue, who had just lost the reigning king of French rock 'n' roll to Philips, Seven reasoned that there was nothing that Johnny Hallyday could do that she couldn't do equally well, and set about proving it. Unlike the other rockeuses, Seven toted her guitar like a cool, young gunslinger, swivelling her hips and falling to her knees as easily and effectively as Presley and Hallyday before her. Her debut EP had typically banal Vogue artwork, although it showed off her tomboyish approach  nicely, but the contents blasted listeners out of their armchairs. She went head to head with Hallyday on the lead track, a reasonable enough cover of Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again" ("Viens danser le twist"), but it was the rest of the record that established her as the finest rockeuse north of the border. Drawn from the repertoire of Italian rock 'n' roller Adriano Celentano, "Blue-jean's rock" and "Le rythme du rock" ("Movemento di rock") saw her answering the call to arms, yelping and hollering like a backwoods Tennessee cowboy. Genteel she was not - there was nothing of the cutesy-pie appeal of yé-yé in her approach. Instead, Seven turned music industry expectations upside down, emerging as a dynamic rock 'n' roll performer a decade before Suzi Quatro made the same journey. 

With this out of her system, Seven followed through with a second cracking EP release, this time with cover art that lived up to her public image. The standouts this time were covers of Little Tony's Italian hit "Pericolo blu" ("Non, ce n'est pas dangereux") and Fats Domino's "Shu Rah" ("Ça va"), both tasty rockers with punchy saxophone and electric guitar slicing through the air as Seven gave her all at the microphone. Out in front of an audience, the singer pulled out the stops and she was no less full-on in the studio, but clearly, despite some reasonable sales, the music industry had no idea what to do with her. Given a chance to strut her stuff on television, she was left without her guitar to front the stage like a (sort-of) conventional chanteuse, although she still managed to turn on the appeal for a raucous version of her twist hit. 

Like the others, Seven was too raucous for public consumption and after just two releases, she hung up her guns. Like Paqun, she would make a low-key return in the mid-sixties for an EP that was widely ignored and that, to all intents and purposes, was that. Apart from Brenda Lee, there were few singers anywhere in the world operating successfully in this territory (Janis Martin, anyone?). Lulu was still three years away and in school; across the Atlantic, Lee's biggest (and more popular) rival was Connie Francis, and there was little of the raucous about her. In any case, the wheel was about to turn, as the twist ushered in a lighter-hearted, less frantic form of rock 'n' roll and Gillain Hills ushered in the rise of the yé-yé girls. What was needed was someone who could bridge the gap between rock 'n' roll and the new yé-yé wave. By the end of 1961, that singer had emerged in the shape of the young Sylvie Vartan.

Like many singers, Vartan had come to her career in a roundabout way. Her brother Eddie was a record producer at Decca and RCA and among his clients was rock 'n' roller Frankie Jordan. who needed a duet partner for his cover of "Floyd Robinson's "Out Of Gas" ("Panne d'essence"). Gillian Hills was booked for the gig but dropped out at the last minute, so Eddie called in his little sister to add some cutesy-pie, high pitched squeaks to the record. These proved so appealing - and made the record such a success - that the young Vartan was soon offered a record contract of her own with RCA. The key track, and the big hit on the record, was the teen ballad, "Quand le film est triste" (Sue Thompson's "Sad Moveis (Make Me Cry)") but both the Vartans were drawn to more rhythmic material and wanted to showcase something a bit closer to the rock 'n' roll market, without frightening the horses. The answer was a cover of Neil Sedaka's "Calendar Girl" ("Tout le long du calendrier") which was just right for attracting the rock 'n' roll audience without scaring off everyone else. When this followed the ballad across the airwaves, the teenage audience finally found its first female rock 'n' roll star.

Having established herself with a style mid-way between rock 'n' roll and more conventional pop, Vartan pushed the boat out a little on her next few releases. Her second EP mixed rocking covers of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" ("Est-ce que tu les sais?"), Bobby Lewis' "One Track Mind" ("Un p'tit je ne sais quoi") and Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" ("Sois pas cruel") with the teen fluff of Hayley Mills' "Let's Get Together" ("Nous deux ça colle") and her fourth cut loose on The Ikettes' "I'm Blue" ("Gong gong") and Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)" ("Cri de ma vie") while smoothing things out with a pair of covers from The Shirelles, one of the American girl groups whose style would be such a huge influence on the yé-yé girls who would follow. 

It was the latter which would eventually win out and by the time that Vartan went to town on Little Eva's "Loco-Motion" ("Le locomotion"), the yé-yé revolution would be complete, with Vartan established as the queen of the yé-yé girls forever more. But she - and the many other firls who rose to prominence in the sixties, would owe much to the pioneering work of the rockeuses who preceded them. Hédika, Gélou, Nicole Paquin and Jackie Seven would never become the household names that Vartan, Sheila and Françpise Hardy would be, but they fully deserved their places in the history books for their sterling work in laying the foundations for everything that would follow. 

You can read more about the rockeuses - and much more besides - in my newly-released book. Feel free to grab a copy here: BOOK