French Pop History

  In any hypothetical search for the world's most unlikely pop star, the name of S œ ur Sourire would almost certainly rank highly on any list. A Dominican nun from Belgium, singing religious songs accompanied only by her own acoustic guitar was nobody's idea of a hit parade hero and yet at the end of 1963, under the anglicised nom de guerre  The Singing Nun, she sat squarely atop both the singles and the albums chart in Billboard , the best selling singer in the whole U.S.A. Her rise from the convent to The Ed Sullivan Show  was a truly strange story but sadly the aftermath was less happy and the sad tale of her rise and fall is as cautionary a tale about the effects  of fame as any.  Born in  Belgium in 1933, Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers was raised in the Catholic faith and worked as a teacher between 1954 and 1959 before deciding to dedicate her life to God, entering a Dominican convent in Waterloo in September 1959, adopting the name S œ ur Luc Gabr...

  As soon as cinema began the shift from silent movies to "the talkies",  music and song became part of the staple cinematic diet. From the early jukebox musicals to the extravaganzas of the golden age of the Hollywood musical, singers (and musicians) flocked to film studios to become singer-actors, forging dual careers that kept them in constant work, on film sets, stages and studios, for many a long year. There would also be a slow but steady trickle of actors making the same journey in the other direction, drifiting into recording studios in a (sometimes successful) attempt to forge a parallel singing career. This was (and is) common enough in America, but it was really in France that this tradition truly established itself. The trend began, as one might expect, in the thirties. Tino Rossi made the jump from chanson  and operetta to cinema in Marinella , with its deathless title track generating one of his biggest hits. However, Rossi had made the journey in the tradit...

Back to business after a two week break for the Easter holidays, which got me thinking about the fact that while Christmas songs a two a centime, songs about Easter are few and far between. Outside of gospel and religious music, anyway... This is certainly true in British and American pop music, but it seems to be true in French pop music too. Although there is this one... The early seventies were the protest years in France, as the hope engendered by les évenements   of May 1968 gave way to the frustrations of the Pompidou presidency. While student protests began to fade in the US after the shootings at Kent State University, in France barely a week went by without striking workers, marching students and sometimes violent clashes with the forces of law and order. Hardly a likely environment in which to find the country's primary religious icon, and yet... In 1970, Philippe Labro was a novelist and journalist with a long career in television and a recent feature film, Tout peu...

French pop singers of the fifties and sixties are often criticised for being reliant on cover versions of overseas hits - in particular those emanating from the UK or the US. While there is some justification in this - after all, many of the yé-yé  singers in particular began their careers by covering the big international hits of the day - the truth is that many singers did rely on their own material (or that of the country's songsmiths). There were far more original French songs around than is generally realised, and a significant number of those went on to find success internationally, including some, like this one, that failed to ring the bell at home. Gilbert Bécaud was one of the big French stars of the fifties. A remarkable performer and a gifted composer (like Elton John, he could not write lyrics and so relied on collaborators to provide lyrics to his songs throughout his career), he had begun his career as part of the backroom team behind Édith Piaf before rocketing ...

Every UK chart fan knows that the first number one hit was Al Martino's "Here In My Heart", which was on top in November 1952 when the New Musical Express published the first UK pop chart. Many Americans probably know that the first US number one was "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, with vocals by none other than Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers, sitting at the top of the first ever Billboard list of best-selling records in July 1940. Actually, neither of the above facts are entirely true - at least, they are only true when it comes to record sales. Prior to that, hits were registered on the basis of sheet music sales, and so the first UK number one apparently dates to October 1936 and the first American one goes back to 1913 or 1914! But of course, they were not number one records...  But what about France? Strange as it may seem, despite a thriving record (and sheet music) market before the war, France was slow to develop a hi...