Les Chansons de Paris
1998?: C D R G Productions C D R G 502
Maurice Chevalier, 1932
Lucienne Delyle, 1939
Georges Ulmer, 1946
Mistinguett1927
Henri Garat1931
Lys Gauty, 1934
Fréhel, 1936
Albert Prejean, 1939
Edith Piaf, 1937
Charles Trenet, 1938
Mistinguett, 1942
Andrex, 1946
Jean Gabin, 1936
Mistinguett, 1942
Maurice Chevalier, 1942
Josephine Baker, 1931
Perchicot, 1932
Charles Trenet, 1938
Mistinguett, 1936
Berthe Sylva, 1932
Offenbach
Offenbach
O. Strauss
Marcel Cariven
Despite its atrocious cover art, evidently a reference to France’s unexpected upset of Brazil in the 1998 World Cup (I don’t follow sports things but I was in Paris in 1998 a few months after the event and people there were STILL euphoric about it), this is actually a quite good assortment of recordings, mostly of the 1930s–1940s class of sentimentality and nostalgia. Even Piaf sounds almost lovely on this, not as stridently melodramatic as usual, although Mistinguett gets two good and two “ouch!” tracks (the latter are track 4, “Ça, C’Est Paris,” and track 19, “Oui, Je Suis de Paris” which is not quite as bad), and Lys Gauty on track 6 sounds very much like Marlene Dietrich. And then there’s Maurice Chevalier on a couple of tracks, sounding as ridiculous as ever.
Charles Trenet’s rendition of “Menilmontant” has a warm earthiness always bursting into effusive local pride, an abundant delight indulged more fully in “Y’a de la Joie.” The nostalgia theme is most purely represented here by Fréhel’s “Où Est-il Donc?” which simply and sadly wonders where everything went…all the things that made a Parisian neighborhood the simple joy it was, although of course generations later people were bemoaning the loss of even Fréhel’s day; I think that’s a crucial aspect to Paris, for anyone with a sense of heritage and history anyway, the awareness of what has been, all around you no matter what street you’re on.
And of course Josephine Baker’s dreadfully accented French on “J’ai Deux Amous” is as cringeworthy as ever. Skippety-poo.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.