Plus Grandes Chansons

Les Immortels: Jean Gabin. By [...]Many, many moons ago, around 1973-1975 (three of my four or five happiest years) while I was driving my Peugeot 504 in Paris, I heard a "song" by Jean Gabin (one of the "Monstres Sacrés" of the French cinematographic industry) where he constantly repeated "Je Sais".In fact, it was a narrative with a discrete piano in the background, about a man who keeps saying "I know" during all his life, until he realizes that he only knows one thing:"Le jour où quelqu'un vous aime, il fait très beau" ~ "The day when somebody loves you, it's a very beautiful day" "Il fait très beau"!There is only a very short period while Gabin sings in this number ("un mauvais moment à passer" as they say in France...) but the rest of it is captivating thanks to the low-pitched voice of the actor in his mature age.At the end, he concludes: "Je sais seulement qu'on ne sait jamais rien" ~ "I only know that one never knows anything". Antoine de Saint Flour (main character of Jean Anouilh's play "Cher Antoine", his masterpiece, that I read with my French students for years) already said in 1969: "On ne sait rien, on ne saura jamais rien" ~ "One knows nothing, one will never know anything""Maintenant je sais" is the song that opens this CD, that I finally purchased from Amazon.com more than thirty years after I heard it for the first time. Once that phantoms of times past applied enough pressure under Florida's sunshine.The second song is « Quand on s'promène au bord de l'eau ». This is an old French classic of 1936 : words by Julien Duvivier, music by Maurice Yvain. It was the musical theme of the film « La Belle équipe » (1936) by the same Julien Duvivier, with Jean Gabin, who sings it and Charles Vanel, another « Monstre Sacré » of the French cinema, as the second character. Thirteen other songs follow, but they are less important: « Qu'est-ce que tu dis d'ça », « C'est chouette d'être un monsieur », « Chanson de mariniers », « Ingénument naïvement », « Je ne dis pas non », « La môme caoutchouc », « Léo Léa Elie », « c'est un petit rien », « On m'suit », « quand on a ça », « C'est moi le mari », « Avec ma petite gueule », « Viens Fifine »Jean Gabin, who was one of the greatest actors of all times, was far from singing like Pavaroti, Sinatra or Dean Martin, but some of these songs were famous in the 1930's and the 1940's; and if you like French accordion, you might enjoy this cheap CD in which the first number alone justifies the small change that you will pay for it.