CHARLES TRENET Vol.2
“Je chante”
Original 1937-1948 Recordings
The much-fêted composer of “La mer” (so far recorded, it is
claimed, over 4,000 times world-wide) and nearly 1,000 other songs, Charles
Trenet is the figurehead of present-day chansonniers. A performing legend on a par with Piaf, Chevalier and
Sablon, Charles Trenet, the self-styled ‘clown’ of French cabaret, was also an
entertainer whose larger-than-life antics masked a broader polymathy and
unflagging professional dynamism.
Born in Narbonne, in Aude, South-Western France, on 18 May 1913 he
always had, first and foremost, a talent for words. He was also given from an early age to vocal improvising and
at kindergarten, when asked by his nanny what he was singing about, is said to
have replied ‘Je chante ce que j’invente’.
In 1922, following his parents’ divorce, Charles moved with
his brother Antoine to Perpignan, where their father was a practising lawyer,
and at fifteen, spurred on by the Catalan poet Bausil, he published his first
verses. Through this genial but
eccentric man-of-letters, who also edited and published the sporting chronicle
Le Coq Catalan, Trenet rubbed shoulders with such prominent avant-garde figures
as Giono, Giraudoux, Mauriac, Maurois, Saint-Exupéry and the painter Fons
Godail, a noted cabaret set-designer under whose influence the young Charles
was to exhibit, in 1927, various examples of his own work. In 1928 he joined his mother and
step-father (former silent-screen set-designer Benno Vigny) in Berlin and there
aspired, at least briefly, to become a film-director! His father had hoped he would become an architect, but the
artistically-inclined Charles devoted himself instead to writing his first
novel: Dodo Manières.
In 1930 Trenet moved to Paris where he worked as a graphic
artist at Pathé’s Joinville film studios and, quickly settling in the capital
frequented the nightspots of Montmartre and Montparnasse (notably Le Boeuf sur
le Toit). Billed as ‘Le fou
chantant’ (= singing clown, or fool, à la Jolson) he soon rose to cabaret
stardom, while his associates in intellectual circles included fellow-writers
Antonin Artaud, Jean Cocteau and his literary mentor and hero Max Jacob
(1876-1944). During 1933 Trenet’s
song-writing and performing duo with his partner, the Swiss-born lyricist-composer
Johnny Hess (1915-1983) took off – with a little help from Josephine Baker –
and with Hess he went on to co-write many successes, including “Rendez-vous
sous la pluie” (1935) and the 1936 Grand Prix du Disque-winner “Vous qui passez
sans me voir”. As ‘Charles et
Johnny’ the pair recorded for Pathé and made regular cabaret appearances until
both were drafted into French military service, in 1936.
Taking his lead from Mireille and Sablon and other
revitalisers of the chanson, by mid-decade Trenet was in the vanguard of
composer-performers who, inspired by the recently imported transatlantic idiom,
had re-channelled Jazz into Swing.
His musical gifts were complemented from the outset by an inordinate, if
sometimes unequal, poetical instinct.
The author of three novels and copious reams of verse (in style at first
surréaliste, in emulation of Max Jacob), the songs he penned from the
late-1930s onwards enshrined in some measure the spirit of the age. Like Prévert and few others, he
skilfully distilled nostalgia both musically and verbally with amazing economy.
Signed by Columbia, in 1937 Trenet made his first solo
commercial recordings: Fleur bleue coupled with Je chante (this last, one of
several Trenet collaborations with Paul Misraki (born 1908), the virtual anthem
which was to become the title of his first film Je chante (1938), which also
featured La vie qui va). Written
during his military service, Y a d’la joie became his greatest hit to date and
led to an invitation to write and appear in two films, of which La route
enchantée (1938 – this included Grand Prix-winning ‘Boum!’ – see Naxos
Nostalgia 8.120530: Charles Trenet Vol.1 La mer) was the most successful. In 1943, with more limited success, he
returned to the screen (as co-writer with Jacques Prévert) in Adieu, Léonard
and spent the rest of World WarII in maintaining French morale with his songs,
most significantly “Douce France” (1943).
In 1945 Trenet moved to the USA where for several years he
worked mainly as a writer.
Many of his recordings were issued in the States and although
none made the popular charts Top 30 several enjoyed wide circulation and
assured Trenet a circle of ardent admirers. By 1952 he was again domiciled in his native France, but
made regular return trips to the USA and Canada. Energetic and dynamic at every public appearance (‘Je suis
né poète, je mourrai athlète’ was the oft-quoted motto which he joked would one
day be his epitaph), he continued a rigorous performing schedule in France
until his official retirement in 1975.
Not yet content to withdraw from the limelight, however, by the end of
the decade he had embarked on a series of farewell tours in Canada. In 1978 he published his memoirs,
jointly with his mother (who died shortly afterwards) and until the late 1980s
he made further tours of Europe and Canada. In 1993 he appeared in a BBC radio tribute, in London. Awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1989 he
was later variously created a commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
and Président of the French Ministry of Culture’s Commission for Song.
Never wanting in creative energy, in 1992 and 1995 Trenet
published new collections of songs and during November 1999 gave three concerts
in Paris where, apparently undaunted in spirit if weakened physically by a
series of strokes, he sang at a Charles Aznavour concert in 2000. On 18 February 2001, aged 87 years, he
died in a hospital near Paris and the following day was hailed by French
President Jacques Chirac as ‘a great artist, poet and national institution.’
Peter Dempsey, 2004