French Pop History

  Christmas, 1961. The rock 'n' roll wave that had finally broken over France the previous year had gone from strength to strength and the onset of twist-mania at the end of the year had helped to cement its place in the French musical firmament - even parents were happy to get out on the dancefloor to do the twist. The yé-yé explosion was just around the corner. Everywhere, it seemed that the new teenage music was in the ascendant. Everywhere except, so far, the world of Christmas music. Christmas in France was synonymous with Tino Rossi, a star since the thirties whose 1946 festival offering "Petit Papa Noël" had been a hit not just that year but every year since, making the transition from 78 to EP without even pausing for breath. The biggest commercial success of Rossi's career and the biggest selling French record ever, it was (and is) to the French what Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" was (and is) to Americans - inescapable, ever-present and in...

    7 May, 1954. The French military have just been humiliated by the Vietnamese in the battle of Dien Bien Phu and hopes of reconstituting the pre-war French empire in south eastern Asia have been vanquished along with the army. The government is in shock and the defeat hangs heavy over a country still piecing itself back together after the most calamitous of decades.  The very same day, Marcel Mouloudji, a rising chansonnier  with a following among the intelligentsia congregating on the left bank in Paris generally known only by his surname, was giving a concert. Among the repertoire he chose to perform that day was a newly written song by poet, jazz musician and journalist, Boris Vian, who had been trying to get someone to perform it for some weeks, without success. At length, after Vian reworked the lyrics to adopt a more pacifist approach, Mouloudji agreed to sing it, and 'Le déserteur' received its first public airing in front of a shocked and stunned audience....