Charles Trenet

His admiration of the surrealist poet and Catholic Mystic Max Jacob (1876–1944) and his love of jazz were two factors that influenced Trenet's songs.

Louis Charles Augustin Georges Trenet (18 May 1913 – 19 February 2001) was a renowned French singer-songwriter who composed both the music and the lyrics to nearly 1,000 songs over a career that lasted more than 60 years.

In 1922, Trenet moved to Perpignan, this time as a day pupil.

André Fons-Godail, the "Catalan Renoir" and a friend of the family, took him for excursions with painting.

His poetry is said to have the painter's eye for detail and colour.

Many of his songs refers to his surroundings such as places near Narbonne, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean coast.

He passed his baccalauréat with high marks in 1927.

After leaving school, he left for Berlin, where he studied art, and later, he also briefly studied at art schools in France.

Many of his hits from the 1930s and 1940s effectively combine the melodic and verbal nuances of French song with American swing rhythms.

When Trenet first arrived in Paris in the 1930s, he worked in a movie studio as a props handler and assistant, and later joined the artists in the Montparnasse neighbourhood.

From 1933 to 1936, he worked with the Swiss pianist Johnny Hess as a duo known as Charles and Johnny.

They performed at various Parisian venues, such as Le Fiacre, La Villa d'Este, the Européen and the Alhambra.

They recorded 18 discs for Pathé, the most successful of which was "Quand les beaux jours seront là/Sur le Yang-Tsé-Kiang".

The Charles and Johnny records feature Hess on piano, with the two frequently singing in two-part harmonies with quickly alternating solo spots for the two.

Around 1935, the duo appeared regularly on the radio on a broadcast titled Quart d'heure des enfants terribles.

The duo continued until 1936 when Trenet was called up for national service.

After performing this, he received the nickname that he would retain all his life: "Le Fou chantant" (The Singing Madman).

He began his solo career in 1937, recording for Columbia, his first disc being "Je chante/Fleur bleue".

The exuberant "Je chante" gave rise to the notion of Trenet as a "singing vagabond", a theme that appeared in a number of his early songs and films.

He shot to stardom very quickly; as Jean Cocteau put it, when Trenet sang, "He was so young, so fresh that the bar yielded to a rustic decor, the projectors became the stiff branches of a cherry tree, the microphone a hollyhock, the piano a cow."

At the start of World War II, Trenet was called up.

These songs include "Boum!" (1938), "La Mer" (1946) and "Nationale 7" (1955).

Trenet is noted for his work with musicians Michel Emer and Léo Chauliac, with whom he recorded "Y'a d'la joie" (1938) for the first and "La Romance de Paris" (1941) and "Douce France" (1947) for the latter.

His song "La Mer", which according to legend he composed with Léo Chauliac on a train in 1943, was recorded in 1946.

Trenet explained in an interview that he was told that "La Mer" was not swing enough to be a hit, and for this reason, it sat in a drawer for three years before it was recorded.

"La Mer" is Trenet's best-known work outside the French-speaking world, with more than 400 recorded versions.

"I Wish You Love" was first recorded by Keely Smith in 1957, and since then, by artists that include Frank Sinatra, Blossom Dearie, Sam Cooke, and Dusty Springfield.

"Formidable", another of Trenet's songs, was written as impressions of a trip to the U.S. Other Trenet songs were recorded by French singers such as Maurice Chevalier, Jean Sablon and Fréhel.

Trenet was born in Avenue Charles Trenet, Narbonne, Occitanie, France, the son of Françoise Louise Constance (Caussat) and Lucien Etienne Paul Trenet.

When he was age 7, his parents divorced, and he was sent to boarding school in Béziers, but he returned home just a few months later, suffering from typhoid fever.

It was during his convalescence at home that he developed his artistic talents, such as performing music, painting and sculpting.

The tune, given unrelated English words and the title "Beyond the Sea" (or sometimes "Sailing"), was a hit for Bobby Darin in the early 1960s, and George Benson in the mid-1980s.

"Beyond the Sea" was used in the ending credits of Finding Nemo.

Besides "La Mer", the other Trenet song to receive numerous recordings in English is "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", which lyricist Albert Beach adapted as "I Wish You Love".

He was awarded an Honorary Molière Award in 2000.

Trenet's best-known songs include "Boum!", "La Mer", "Y'a d'la joie", "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?", "Ménilmontant" and "Douce France".

His catalogue of songs is enormous, numbering close to 1,000.

Some of his songs had unconventional subject matter, with whimsical imagery bordering on the surreal.

"Y'a d'la joie" evokes joy through a series of disconnected images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street, and a baker making excellent bread.

The lovers engaged in a minuet in "Polka du Roi" reveal themselves at length to be "no longer human": they are made of wax and trapped in the Musée Grévin.