Story of America's most romanticized depression era (1930's) criminals made even more glamorous by Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot. Thanks to Ema of Rennes, France for help with this translation.
Early performance of Brel's most often covered song, known in English by Rod McKuen's adaptation "If You Go Away." English subtitles are a literal translation of the lyric as Brel intended it. Not a love song, Brel tells us, but a song of lacheté, weakness, though most would disagree.
Aznavour's moving portrait of the deathbed scene of a beloved Italian mother combines realism, sentiment and religion to make one of his most enduring songs. This performance from his later years seems to be the most intense. Aznavour was the only French chansonnier to be played by Bob Dylan, who knows no French, on his Theme Time Radio . Ray Charles covered this song in the US.
From 1965, just after the peak of his career, Jacques envisions his future and recalls his past. In his childhood days he was called Jacky, a little fellow who wished he could be one of those people who gets by on good looks-- handsome and stupid at the same time. The facial expressions that go with this are epic.
1961 Song about a dying man's farewell to his friend, his priest, his unfaithful wife and her lover. Mawkishly adapted by Terry Jacks in English as Seasons in the Sun, widely covered by indies and punk bands in America and the UK, notably Kurt Cobain's Nirvana, Pearls before Swine, Blink -182.
Piaf found the music for this song in Peru when on tour and had the songwriter Michel Rivgauche write French lyrics for it. She performs it with passion and total identification, as if it she were living it. Thanks to Ema of Rennes, France for
help with this translation.
The original of the American hit song My Way words by Paul Anka, covered by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley was this French song about a relationship gone wrong, deteriorated into pretending. Words and music by Gilles Thibault, Jacques Revaux and Claude François, 1968.
Fans of the 1950's Howdy Doody Show, one of TV's earliest children's shows--
http://www.youtub e.com/watch?v=WJ-IPX pvRaU
will appreciate this satire by '50s comic genius Ernie Kovacs
In 1972 Charles Aznavour stunned France with this realist chanson about a transvestite dancer, his gay life and sad loves. It has since then become a classic, sung in English as " What Makes a Man a Man."
Posted with French and English subtitles for educational purposes. Thanks again to philipechek of YouTube and Paris for consultation and background information about this song.
The source for Bobby Darin's 1960 hit Beyond the Sea was a song by the archetypal French chansonnier Charles Trenet, La Mer, written in 1945. What it lost in poetry when it washed up on American shores, it gained in swing, and was a long standing hit on both continents. #2 on the list of 100 Les Plus Belles Chansons after Brel's Ne Me Quitte Pas
Brel's first performance of his song known to the English speaking world as My Childhood. He describes his unhappiness and how it all changed when he met his first girlfriend, later to be his wife. Recorded 1966. This is the first performance of this song. Later, some of the words were changed for the recording on Barclay.
![Jacques Brel L\](http://img.youtube.com/vi/JUhGj3Fzym4/2.jpg "Jacques Brel L\")
![Claude François Comme D\](http://img.youtube.com/vi/6qmKK0FFhos/2.jpg "Claude François Comme D\")
