Charles Trenet, the legendary French crooner, age 87, died of a stroke in a hospital in the Paris suburb of Créteil, just a few miles from where I’m writing my dance column. The news of Trenet’s death struck me, as I’m sure it has millions of music lovers on both sides of the Atlantic.
His death symbolizes the end of an era characterized by melancholic melodies imbued with idealism. It was an era in which Trenet prolifically created his songs along with his contemporaries, such as Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. Since the ’20s, these humanistic visions have attracted many romantics to France.
Born in the southern coastal town of Narbonne in 1913, Trenet began singing and composing from the age of 17, spreading a nostalgic yet exhuberant joie de vivre message. He gave us over a thousand songs full of simple, yet highly poignant poetry. A good number of American vocalists have rearranged Trenet’s hits, one favorite being “I Wish You Love.” Another, “Sailing” — made famous by Bobby Darin — was recently updated by Harry Coninck Jr.... Trenet spent several years in the States. and his rhythmic sensibility and jazzy spontaneity earned him the nickname of “le fou chantant.”
I was lucky to attend Trenet’s last concert at the Salle Pleyel in November ’99. Due to various illnesses, he hadn’t performed for six years prior to that. For most of the concert he sang seated in a chair, but by the end of the recital he magically looked like the same young man, who wore a panama and buttonhole carnation in photos taken before WWII.
Hearing “Douce France” on the radio on one of those gray Paris winter mornings makes you feel glad you came here. And like Trenet once said “a long time after the poets have disappeared, their poems will always be there,” keeping them alive to comfort and warm our hearts.
