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Show Notes August 2, 2025

By Michael Stevenson

• The first song we heard tonight, “Air For G String” (also known as “Celebrated Air”) is an arrangement of a classical piece by Johann Sebastian Bach, formally referred to as Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 .

The song was from the 1966 LP on the Philllips label called Place Vendôme. 

Place Vendôme was a unique collaboration recording between France’s  Swingle Singers, known for their a cappella jazz interpretations of classical pieces, and the brilliant New York-based The Modern Jazz Quartet. That’s Milt Jackson’s vibraphone with the sublime lead melody, with John Lewis’s piano providing harmonic and rhythmic support.
Originally founded by Ward Swingle in 1962, “Les Swingle Singers” began as session singers, mainly doing backing vocals for singers such as Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf. The eight vocalists in the group included Christiane  Legrand as lead soprano. She was also the vocalist who dubbed the part of “Madame Emery” in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), which was composed by her brother Michel Legrand.

• Next, we heard an instrumental song from perhaps my favorite album of last year, “Les Egarés.”  That record was described as  “neither jazz, nor trad, nor chamber, nor avant-garde, but a bit of all of them, all at once.” 

The group is comprised of tenor saxophonist Emile Parisien, cellist Vincent Segal, accordion virtuoso Vincent Peirani, and kora maestro Ballaké Sissoko (who originates from Mali). We heard the delightful klezmer-like dance song, ‘Esperanza’  

• Following that cut we heard “Au bois de Saint-Amand” – a song written and performed by the French performer known as “Barbara,” from 1964. The lyrics of the song evoke the first loves of adolescents and is presented almost as a nursery rhyme.

“Barbara” (real name Monique Andrée Serf) was born in Paris in 1930. Because she was Jewish, she and her family were forced to hide in several different French cities throughout the Fascist occupation of France during WWII. After the war, Barbara studied music in Paris, eventually rising to fame in the 1960s. She was beloved in France due to her melancholic musical style, her pathos as a ‘suffering artist’ (she always dressed in black), and her non-conforming attitudes. Thousands of people attended the funeral in November 1997, including actor Gerard Depardieu, who served as a pallbearer. 

• Next, we heard pianist/singer-songwriter Jeanne Cherhal. Cherhal’s song “Les Photos de Mariage” (Wedding Photos) speaks of the complexities of love, memory, and the bittersweet nature of looking back at wedding photos after a love relationship has soured.

• French Chanson legend Yves Montand next sings “Barbara,”  a song based on a poem by Jacques Prévert, who also wrote Montand’s classic “Les Feuilles Mortes” (known in America as “The Autumn Leaves.”)

The song’s lyrics reflect on the destruction of the French city of Brest during World War II. The lyrics contrast a happy memory of a woman named Barbara, observed in the rain, amongst the later devastation of the city by war, referring to it as “a terrible and desolate rain of mourning”. The song questions the fate of Barbara and her lover amidst the “rain of iron, of fire, of steel, of blood”.  

• Next we hear Les Itinérantes performing their version of “Windmills of Your Mind.” That song, from the film The Thomas Crown Affair, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1968. Les Itinérantes perform a cappella songs in over forty different languages. Manon Cousin, Pauline Langlois de Swarte and Élodie Pont “shape a sound with multiple personalities to embrace the different musical stories they tell.”

• Following “Windmills” we heard the legendary Toots Thielmans with a harmonica medley of Legrand movie themes including “The Windmills of Your Mind”; “Summer of ‘42”; and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”

• Next, we hear LeGrand’s frequent collaborator, lyricist Alan Bergman, performing a song he wrote the lyrics to,”What Are you Doing the Rest Of Your Life?” That song was featured in the 1969 film The Happy Ending. Bergman often co-wrote with his wife, Marilyn. Alan Bergman passed away in this past July.

• Finally in this Legrand segment of music, we heard a cut from the composer’s film classic “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” – the international hit song “I Will Wait for You.”

• Next, we hear Francis Cabrel sing Otis Redding’s classic Soul ballad “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” (“Depuis Toujours,” en français). That track comes from Cabrel’s 1994 album titled Samedi Soir Sur La Terre. Redding’s classic original was released in 1965.

• Next, three songs from the album “Mlah” by LesNegresse Vertes. That band was aptly described as a “French version of The Pogues.”

Les Négresses Vertes fused traditional sounds, Jazz Manouche, Ska, adding bawdy barroom lyrics and “a robust ladleful of punk attitude.”

You may also discern the added theatricality of circus music in the three songs. Three of the original members had worked in the Zingaro Horse Circus in Southern France, while a fourth was a professional clown.

The band was led by Noel Rota, best known as “Helno.”  Sadly, Helno died while attempting to overcome a heroin addiction in 1993, just as the band was achieving peak success.

Rest in Peace, Helno Rota (January 22, 1993), Shane MacGowan (November 30, 2023), Alan Bergman (July 17, 2025), Marilyn Bergman January 8, 2022), and Connie Francis (July 16, 2025).