Henri Salvador
Thursday, 14 February 2008
This how paranoia works: every time I read a newspaper, famous people have died! If I had a talent for paranoia, I would not read newspapers any longer, because I don’t won’t people to die.
Today I read that Henri Salvador died recently. He is a French singer/comedian who started his carreer before WW2. Henri lived to be ninety. I don’t know much of the man. About twenty years ago I bought my first, sleeveless 45 of him, with this song on it:
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Later I collected a whole bunch of his 45’s, but not all turned out to be of my taste. Henri Salvador cannot be categorised: he recorded songs in every possible genre, from calypso’s to rock’n’roll, from love-ballads to chansons, and from pophits to jazz standards. My main interest are the more uptempo rock’n’roll songs about monsters, space rockets, zombies and other exiting topics, of which Henri Salvador happen to have recorded some too. Here is one:
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I think that there will be many CD’s out with greatest hits of Henri Salvador.
I don’t have any. I don’t even have an LP, only scratchy 45’s, often without a sleeve. On the photo’s that I have of Henri Salvador, he is often trying to make me laugh. I am not very interested in that kind of amusement. I guess that most of the lyrics of his songs would irritate me if they were in Dutch or in English, but I have never done any effort to try and understand what he is saying. Here is a song from an EP with r’n’r covers:
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My favourite song by Henri Salvador (and let me say it once again: I have no idea what the man recorded in the seventy years that he was popular in French, so I have no idea what I am talking about) is a song about computers. Songs about computers, robots, A.I.’s, virtual realities and related subjects are one of my all time favourite categories. I have not written much about this special shelf in my wall of records, but that will happen soon, I promise. Henri Salvador recorded Beta gamma L’ordinateur in 1970 or so; not many people jumped that early on this topic. Remember what a computer was in 1970?
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Hey Henri, if you read this: have fun, man, I love your records! Well, some of them!