French Pop History

  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  clas...

"  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...