Top Ten... Jazz Francais

At the end of May I spent a glorious 10 days in France, so to celebrate I've done a little piece on le jazz Francais...

1. Michel Legrand
A living legend, Legrand recently did a few nights at Ronnie's.  Singing and playing his own songs, there are few musicians out there today who can make an entire set out of their original material - which are well-known songs to the average punter (Watch What Happens, You Must Believe in Spring, What are you doing the rest of your life?, The Windmills of Your Mind).  Also a winner of 3 Oscars.  Amazing!

2. Nice Jazz Festival 2011

Number 1 and 2 are related as Michel Legrand is appearing this year at Nice Jazz Festival.  I took a stroll around Nice for about 20 minutes while waiting for a train home, and saw more than 10 of these billboards on various roundabouts and junctions.  Good advertising skills!

3. Jacques Loussier
When I was at school my Dad, a classical pianist and general music enthusiast (although never a jazz fan until his daughter became a jazz singer - actually, I think he's more a 'Sarah' fan than anything else... still!), had a cassette tape entitled 'Play Bach,' which is a collection of Bach compositions used as a base for jazz improvisation by the Jacques Loussier Trio.  It's an intriguing recording, and a brilliant concept, that led the trio to sell over 6 million albums.

4. Les Feuilles Mortes

Here is the wonderful Nat King Cole singing 'Les Feuilles Mortes,' a song by Joseph Kosmer with French lyrics by Jacques Prevert and English lyrics by Johnny Mercer.  Excuse Nat King Cole's terrible French accent.  And the terrible video.  But his tone of voice is faultless, and the tempo of this song is more agreeable to me than other, more tortured, versions.

The original lyric is, as expected, quite different to the English version - which isn't really a translation, but a new set of words on the same theme.  There's a good translation here: http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~coby/songtr/lesfm.htm

5. Darling, je vous aime beaucoup

This song is a mixture of French and English - again with a questionable accent (particularly Natalie's lisp on tres/tway), but I love the way the French is tongue-in-cheekly used to rhyme with the English phrases, e.g. Je vous aime beaucoup / Je ne sais pas what to do.

6. Montreux Jazz Festival
I know it's not in France, but they speak French!  And I'm going this year to compete in the Jazz Vocal competition, so I thought it was worth a mention!

7&8. Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli

These two musicians deserve a spot each for essentially creating and making popular a new brand of jazz - Gypsy jazz or jazz Manouche.

9. Blossom Dearie singing Comment Allez-vous

This is a great recording of a really swinging song.


10. Ne me quitte pas

An incredibly emotional version of this song.