Dear readers and fellow bloggers:
Good afternoon. Today, September 23, 2020, Juliette Gréco, the great French chanteuse, passed away in her home of Ramatuelle (Var) at the age of 93 years old. She was the singing muse of Saint Germain des Prés, the bohemian mecca of Paris after the devastation of World War II; her unassuming elegance on stage and her hand acrobatics during her interpretations captivated the imagination of millions of music lovers all over the planet. She interpreted the songs of Brel, Gainsbourg, Var, and she schmoozed with all the intellectual icons of Post-War Paris like Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus. With her classic black outfits, she cut an immense figure on every stage.
She worked until very late in her life, claiming that “in order to resist the coming of the end we must love what we do, in a crazy way, to love your work like I love mine, meaning in an out of bounds way, without limits, to the point of going to sing in a small theater of the suburbs in the matinée section and relish that a young man at the end of my singing said: ‘She’s good, hein, Gréco!”
Amongst all her dazzling interpretations we have listened, there is one that is one that stands out for its tenderness. In a regular drawer of a Parisian cabaret, the singer Lucienne Boyer discovered the forgotten lyrics of “a little song” that Jean Lenoir had written in 1930. The songwriter did not see any commercial value in it and he stashed it away. It could have been easily forgotten or lost forever but luck made Lucienne discover it. She sang the first version of Parlez moi d’amour, with great success in France, the rest of Europe and the Americas. Juliette Gréco made an astounding version, which we invite you to enjoy in this You Tube post. Please close your eyes and start dreaming.
Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful
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Don’t leave me alone.