I didn't know that was a French song...

 

One of the unforseen joys of researching my book was stumbling across the original versions of songs that I had known for years without ever realising that they owed their start to French singers, songwriters and musicians. This week's post highlights a handful of French songs that became international pop classics...

Everyone knows Little Peggy March's 1963 American chart topper, "I WIll Follow Him", right? A monster hit at the height of the "girl group" era. Or maybe, depending on where you grew up, you might know the version by Rosemary Clooney, or perhaps by Dee Dee Sharp, or even the disco version by Claudja Barry. But how many people know it started life as an intsrumental called "Chariot", penned by two behemoths of French easy listening, bandleaders Paul Mauriat and Franck Pourcel and first recorded by Pourcel's orchestra in 1962? Or that the first vocal version was in French, with lyrics by Jacques Plante? Yep. It's a yé-yé classic and was a monster hit in France in 1962 for Brit-in-France, Petula Clark, two years before she took on the world with "Downtown". Not only that, but Pet recorded the first English version too, although only her Danish fans paid that version much attention. But then Little Peggy's producer got hold of it and...

Or what about Brenda Lee's 1963 country-pop smash, "Losing You". A bona fide country hit all the way, right? Wrong. Even if you know it in the version by Doris Day, or if you first heard it in Australia as performed by Lynne Fletcher in 1967, you'd still figure it was a US-penned creation. Nope. It was first called "Connais-tu" and was written by French songsmiths Jean Renard and Pierre Havet. The first-named of this pair was also the first to record it, in 1960, although it enjoyed more success the following year in the hands of veteran operetta star, Tino Rossi. But fair play, it took the 1963 recording by Brenda Lee (who had been a star in France even before her US breakthrough) to bring it to the worldwide audience it deserved...

And if yé-yé isn't your thing, and you'd rather settle down with a glass of wine and a Tony Bennett album, then surely you'll know "The Good Life", a solid gold classic that surely comes straight out of the Great American Songbook. Er... no, actually. This gorgeous song began life as an intrumental penned by Sacha Distel for a long-forgotten 1962 film called Les 7 péchés capitaux. Distel called the tune "Marina" and popped it onto the market on a two-track 45 that did surprisingly little business for a star of his magnitude. That might have been that, had it not fallen into the hands of American lyricist Jack Reardon, who then got the song to Bennett and, well, the rest is history. Distel was impressed enough to commision a French lyric from Jean Broussolle and recorded it as "La belle vie", thereby covering his own tune....

To bring this little rundown to a close (I think that I might revisit this idea again on a later post), let's jump forward to the folk-rock era and an oddity of a single by Noel Harrison, the plummy-voiced son of actor Rex Harrson. Noel wasn't much of a rocker, really, but he did like his folk music and was drawn to songs with decent lyrics - a little later in the sixties he would be one of the first to record Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne". But back in the mid-sixties, when Bob Dylan was the touchstone for anyone looking for songs to cover, Noel cast the net a little wider and landed a hit of sorts with the rather downbeat "A Young Girl (Of Sixteen)". (If you're reading this in The Netherlands, you might know this song better as Boudewijn de Groot's "Een miesje van 16".) An off the wall effort, but surely an Anglo-American creation? Nope. A quick glance at the credits shows it to have been written by the French team of Robert Chauvigny and Charles Aznavour. The latter recorded it too, as "Une enfant", although he actually offered it up first to la grande dame of French chanson, Édith Piaf, who recorded in it 1951. From Piaf to folk-rock (well, folk-pop, anyway) via the son of an English actor is quite a journey...

You can read more about the singers, songwriters and songs mentioned here - and much more besides - in my book. Feel free to grab a copy here: BOOK