Life must be filled up

Who would have thought that on Christmas Eve, Radio 2 would devote an hour to French music? Much as I love Christmas music, I’m seriously carolled out (the bliss of hearing Schubert on the radio this morning!), so when I was tipped off that the programme had been on, I went looking. Fred is an agreeable host, with his French-Cockney accent, his stories and his humour. All the tracks were new to me except the best of the lot: Charles Trenet singing La Mer. Fred Sirieix: Vive Noël! is available now on BBC Sounds. I loved it!
I now find that I’m way out of touch and that Sirieix is famous but as he appears on TV shows I wouldn’t dream of watching, it’s no wonder I hadn’t heard of him.



This song came out in 1946! I’ve shown a video before but went for the live version this time.

I heard this song, Sympathique, on the radio this morning and really liked it.

A few weeks ago on Sounds of the Sixties, our old mate Brian Matthew mentioned a CD called C’est Chic!, French Girl Singers of the 1960s. I rushed to Amazon to order a copy and two weeks later it arrived. Apart from Françoise Hardy and a couple of others, the singers were all new to me. I love this record! There’s a nice French version of Goffin and King’s He’s In Town sung by Ria Bartok as Tu La Revois. The revelation for me was A La Fin Tu Gagneras by Jocelyne. According to the accompanying booklet, she was a child star billed as ‘the French Brenda Lee’ and forced by her record company to wear white ankle socks to emphasise her youth. Her first EP came out when she was twelve but her career was short as she died tragically in a motorbike accident, aged only twenty. Everyone knows Brenda Lee and Helen Shapiro, but how come I’d lived so long before hearing of this little French belter? It’s really disgraceful how much our political and cultural news is biased towards America and how little we know of our European neighbours in comparison. End of anti-BBC rant. You can read more about Jocelyne here and see a photograph here. I haven’t been able to find any of her songs online.

When I told ramblingfancy that I was waiting for this CD to arrive, she recommended ZAZ. I’ve been listening to her on Spotify and Cor, what a voice. Judge for yourself.