Je Chante
Charles Trenet
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Browse piano sheets by Charles Trenet on Zen Virtual Piano. Narbonne is where Charles Trenet was born and first went to school; once his parents divorced he boarded at the Institution de la Trinité at Béziers. While convalescing at home he developed his artistic talents in music, painting and sculpting. At Perpignan the poet Albert Bausil, editor of Le coq catalan, noticed his first efforts as a poet and painter and encouraged him to go to Paris. Painting and sculpture sit beside music in this early account, which makes song look like one path among several that were open to a boy recovering at home. At 20, at College Inn in the rue Vavin in Montparnasse, Trenet met the pianist Johnny Hess. As Charles et Johnny they wrote songs and performed them in cabaret, with Trenet writing the words and Hess the music at first. Yves Montand's 1937 debut was with Trenet's C'est la vie qui va, and Trenet had also written Y'a de la joie for Maurice Chevalier. Songs handed to Chevalier and Montand give the partnership with Hess a wider echo, carried in other singers' voices rather than only in their own. His solo career began in 1937 with recordings for Columbia; the first disc was Je chante/Fleur bleue. Many of his 1930s and 1940s hits pair American swing rhythms with the melodic and verbal nuances of French song. People told him La Mer lacked the swing to be a hit, he said in an interview, and the song stayed in a drawer for three years until it was recorded. A song judged short on swing, inside a repertoire that blends French song with swing rhythms, makes for a curious pairing, and the three years in the drawer add to the oddity. After the death of his mother in 1979 he shut himself away from the world for two years. His album Les poètes descendent dans la rue, released on 21 May 1999, brought him back to the music scene, and he went back to live performing after it. He was awarded an Honorary Molière Award in 2000, and in November of that year the Narbonne house where he was born was turned into a small museum. Perhaps the museum in his birthplace closes the account neatly, since Narbonne is also where it began.
Browse piano sheets by Charles Trenet on Zen Virtual Piano.
Narbonne is where Charles Trenet was born and first went to school; once his parents divorced he boarded at the Institution de la Trinité at Béziers. While convalescing at home he developed his artistic talents in music, painting and sculpting. At Perpignan the poet Albert Bausil, editor of Le coq catalan, noticed his first efforts as a poet and painter and encouraged him to go to Paris. Painting and sculpture sit beside music in this early account, which makes song look like one path among several that were open to a boy recovering at home.
At 20, at College Inn in the rue Vavin in Montparnasse, Trenet met the pianist Johnny Hess. As Charles et Johnny they wrote songs and performed them in cabaret, with Trenet writing the words and Hess the music at first. Yves Montand's 1937 debut was with Trenet's C'est la vie qui va, and Trenet had also written Y'a de la joie for Maurice Chevalier. Songs handed to Chevalier and Montand give the partnership with Hess a wider echo, carried in other singers' voices rather than only in their own.
His solo career began in 1937 with recordings for Columbia; the first disc was Je chante/Fleur bleue. Many of his 1930s and 1940s hits pair American swing rhythms with the melodic and verbal nuances of French song. People told him La Mer lacked the swing to be a hit, he said in an interview, and the song stayed in a drawer for three years until it was recorded. A song judged short on swing, inside a repertoire that blends French song with swing rhythms, makes for a curious pairing, and the three years in the drawer add to the oddity.
After the death of his mother in 1979 he shut himself away from the world for two years. His album Les poètes descendent dans la rue, released on 21 May 1999, brought him back to the music scene, and he went back to live performing after it. He was awarded an Honorary Molière Award in 2000, and in November of that year the Narbonne house where he was born was turned into a small museum. Perhaps the museum in his birthplace closes the account neatly, since Narbonne is also where it began.
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Charles Trenet
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Charles Trenet was a French singer-songwriter who began his solo career in 1937, recording for Columbia, with the disc Je chante/Fleur bleue.
He was born in Narbonne, and in November 2000 the house where he was born was turned into a small museum.
Trenet said in an interview that people told him the song lacked swing for a hit, so it stayed in a drawer for three years before it was recorded.
Johnny Hess was a pianist whom Trenet met at the College Inn in Montparnasse; as Charles et Johnny the two wrote songs and performed them in cabaret.