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Music
Bowing Out
In the 1960s French cafés had everything British cafés did not: a licence to sell alcohol morning, noon and night, appetising food, and “video” juke boxes, so that for a single franc young people could see as well as hear their favourite performers in action. The two or three minute 16mm colour films made by Scopitone were the forerunners of today’s promotional CDs. The most familiar face on them was that of Henri Salvador, a singer with a silken voice and a skillful exponent of comedy routines, who died last month in Paris at the age of 90.
Salvador was born in French Guiana of Spanish descent, the son of a tax collector. When he was seven Henri moved with his parents, who came from Guadeloupe, to Paris. They bought him a guitar and Henri showed he had an immediate taste and talent for jazz. When he was just 18, one of the great jazz guitarists of the period, “Django” Reinhardt, heard him play at Jimmy’s Bar, a famous cabaret spot in the 1930s, and gave him a job as an accompanist.
In 1941, when Salvador was playing in Cannes, the band leader Ray Ventura was so impressed by his versatility that he hired him as a novelty musician for his orchestra, which was about to tour South America. Within a year Henri had become the star of the show, with a huge versatility for languages, performing in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
After the war Salvador returned to Paris, formed his own orchestra, and wrote more than 400 songs with Boris Vian. His ability to switch from genre to genre was prodigious, and their collaborations included possibly the first rock-and-roll number played regularly in Europe, Rock ‘n Roll Mops. With Walt Disney’s support, Henri also had a big hit with Les Aristochats, a spin-off from the Disney cartoon classic, The Aristocats. But his most influential number was Dans mon Ile (On my Island), written in his tiny Paris flat. It inspired the Brazilian musician Antonio Carlos Jobim to create the bossa nova.
Whenever Salvador was dismissed by his critics, he confounded them by making brilliant personal appearances, including two on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York. In 1996, aged 79, he performed a memorable duo with Ray Charles and another in 2000 with Francoise Hardy on his astonishingly successful comeback album, Chambre avec Vue (Room with a View).
In 2006, by now almost 90, he travelled to Rio de Janeiro to record yet another new album with a strong bossa nova influence. Its title, Révérence (Bowing Out) was a tacit acknowledgement that even Henri Salvador could not go for ever. He sang many tracks from the album at his farewell concert in Paris last December. Listing, much to the amusement of his audience, the many performers who had dropped dead while working, he said, "I am the only one who can bow out while still alive."
From our March 2008 e-newsletter
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