Category: Chanson Du Jour

Chanson Du Jour: Mon Homme / My Man

Mistinguett was at one time the highest-paid female entertainer in the world. A performer at the legendary Moulin Rouge, her legs were insured for 500,000 francs in 1919. Though her well-insured gams were easy on the eyes, Jean Cocteau said her voice was” slightly off-key, (like) that of the Parisian street hawkers—the husky, trailing voice of the Paris people.”

Mistinguett (real name Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois) first recorded her signature song, “Mon Homme”, in 1916. It was popularised under its English title “My Man” by Fanny Brice and has become a jazz standard. Billie Holiday (video below) sang a beautiful, perhaps definitive version in her later years of performing.

Chanson Du Jour 11/7/2016: “Mon Homme” performed by Mistinguett 1938

Billie Holiday “My Man”

Chanson Du Jour: The Tuileries

Camélia Jordana & Bertrand Belin – The Tuileries

Poem by Victor Hugo set to music by Colette Magny.
December 8, 2013 at the 50th anniversary of France-Inter.

We are two funny
To the broad shoulders,
Merry bandits,
Knowing to laugh and beat,
Eating like four,
Drinking like ten.

When, emptying the liters,
We bump to the windows of
the estaminet,
The bourgeois deforms
Tremble in uniform
Under his big bonnet.

We live. In short,
We are an honest man,
We are not a spy.
We go on Sunday,
with Lise or Blanche,
Dinner with Richard.

We live without shelter,
greedily and quickly,
Like the sparrow, Raising
our whims
Until the singers
From Bobino.

Life is diverse,
We brave the shower
That wets our skins;
Still in ribotes
Having few boots
And no hats.

We have drunkenness,
Love, youth, Lightning
in our eyes,
Frightful fists;
We are devils,
We are gods!

Our two seigniaries
Go to the Tuileries To
stroll willingly,
And to say things
To the pink maids
Under the chestnut trees.

Beneath the green shadows Desert
ramps
We wander in the evening,
Water is leaking, the roofs smoke,
The chandeliers light up,
In the black castle.

Our soul collects
What the sheet says
At the end of the day,
The air that a gnome sings.
And, Place Vendome,
The sound of the drum.

The white statues
Pretty little clothed,
Discover their breast,
And make us signs
Whose swans dream
On the great basin.

O Rome! O City!
Annibal, quiet,
About us , schoolboys,
Fixing his vague eyes,
Shows us the rings
Of his knights.

The terrace is brown.
As the moon
fills it with clarity, with
shadows and lies