Featuring Arrangements by Gil Goldstein and Gerard Jouannest With Guest Soloists including Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano, Rufus Reid, Scott Colley, Daniel Sadownick and Wallace Roney
With her long, black hair, arresting eyes, and dark, aquiline features, the immortal chanteuse and actress Juliette Greco has reigned as the Grande Dame of French music for over six decades, under a number of titles, from the “Left Bank Diva," to the “Muse of Saint-Germain-des-Pres." Greco was more than a compelling interpreter of French chansons and alluring figure of the stage and screen: she was the very embodiment of the post World War Two-era of intellectual liberation in Paris that bustled with the sounds of bebop, and the literary works of Albert Camus, Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Satre, and Simone de Beauvoir.
The release of Le Temps de Chanson (The Moment for a Song), Greco's first release in three years, is a sumptuous, sonic summation of that Gallic Golden Age of Song, featuring Greco's interpretations of French classics sung and composed by the likes of Jacques Brel, Leo Ferret, Charles Trenet and Serge Gainsbourg. On these recordings, made in Verderonne, France and New York City, Greco is supported by the incredible, orchestral arrangements of conductor and accordionist Gil Goldstein, and the piano arrangements of Greco's husband and pianist, Gerard Jouannest, augmented by the finest jazz soloists on the scene, including saxophonists Joe Lovano and the late Michael Brecker, bassists Rufus Reid and Scott Colley, percussionist Daniel Sadownick, and trumpeter Wallace Roney.
“This was one of the most beautiful gifts I ever received in my life," Greco says. “It made me feel almost 60 years younger! It reminded me of the time after the Liberation (from Nazi occupation,) when Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Madame Ella Fitzgerald all turned up without warning at the Tabou."
Greco's deep contralto rings with the kind of rich, rarely-heard, otherworldly timbre forged from a lifetime, of love, loss, and longing on par with Billie Holiday's Lady in Satin and Shirley Horn's Here's to Life, that recalls every tumultuous epoch of her extraordinary life, which included wartime occupation, romance and prison. Her soul-stirring renditions of Georges Van Parys's “Un jour tu verras" and a rare, English language performance of Harold Arlen's “Over the Rainbow" are both laced with Roney's Milesian muted trumpet. The dearly departed Brecker's Coltrane-tinged sax sings sweetly on “Ne queleque part (Born Somewhere)" and Lovano's serpentine sax lines elegantly encircle Greco's Afro-bossa take on the Bernard Dinney/Henri Salvador gem, “Syracuse," and “Volare," the Italian pop hit covered by Dean Martin and Bobby Rydell. The florid, flowing waltz “Utile (Useful)," contains a strong, anti-military message that Greco courageously sang in front of Augusto Pinochet's minions! “I told Etienne Roda Gill the unbelievable stories that happened to me in Chile. I was escorted to the airport, like a dangerous woman, by murderous bikers on Pinochet's payroll," Greco recounts. “I met women who had been raped, humiliated and tortured, a disabled man left for dead on the sidewalk. My triumphal entrance on stage, and the dead silence that followed my performance...I was proud of it. I told him: my work is justified by my efforts to be useful."
Other equally powerful performances by Greco include the Gypsy/Latin lilt of Pascal Arroyo's “Les mains d'or (The Golden Hands)," the evocative, Leo Ferre ballad “Avec le temps (As Time Goes By)," the martial, Jacques Brel song, “Mathilde," the waltz-like, Marguerite Monnot-penned “Les Amantes d' un Jour (Lovers For a Day)," and an intimate, piano/vocal duo performance of Serge Gainsbourg's “Le chanson de Prevert (Prevert's Song)."
The wide range of mood and meter on this CD form the perfect soundtrack to Greco's amazing life. Born in Montpellier in the south of France on February 7, 1927 to an absent, Corsican policeman and a French mother, Greco and her older sister, Charlotte, were reared by their maternal grandparents in Bordeaux, where Juliette was educated in a strict Catholic convent. They moved to Paris in 1933 where Greco studied voice at the Paris Opera before the Nazi's occupation in 1940. During the war years, Greco's mother - who worked in the Resistance - and her sister were jailed and deported, while she was sent to prison in France.
After her release from prison, Greco was virtually homeless in the City of Lights, but was saved from the streets by the actress Helene Duc, who encouraged her to enroll in drama classes, and work as a walk-on in the productions at the Comedie Francaise. It was during this time that Greco started hanging out in a number of Left Bank clubs like the Latin Quarter, Le Tabou, and Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Greco reunited with her mother and sister at the end of the war, and briefly returned with them to southwestern France, before returning to Bohemian Paris, where she flourished in the milieu of intellectuals, poets and musicians like Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian, and Albert Camus, and became well-known for her dark looks and rebellious nature. In 1949 she met the love of her life: Miles Davis, who traveled to Paris to play in the Paris International Jazz Festival. “Juliette was probably the first woman that I loved as an equal human being," Davis wrote in his autobiography. “She was a beautiful person. We had to communicate with each other through expressions and body language." According to Greco: “I haven't a clue how we managed," she told Philippe Carles of Jazz Magazine. “[It was] the miracle of love."
In 1949, Greco served as a host at Le Boeuf sur le toit restaurant, and also started her singing career that same year. Two years later, she debuted her single “Je suis comme je suis (I am What I Am)" by Jacques Prevert. In 1954, she won the SACEM Grand Prix award for her cover of Charles Aznavour's “Je hais les dimanches." Her other signature songs were written by Gainsbourg, Raymond Queneau, and Julef Laforgue, including “Si t'imagines (1950)," “L'eternel feminin (1951)," “La Javanaise (1963)," and “Deshabillez-moi (1968)." Her most esteemed LP's were released on the Columbia, Philips, Barclay, RCA Victor and Universal labels. Her filmography includes The Sun Also Rises (1957), The Roots of Heaven (1958), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Lily, Love Me (1975), Belephegor, the Phantom of the Louvre (2001) and Everyman's Feast (2002). Her autobiography Jujube was published in 1982. In 1999, she was presented with the Orde National du Merite by the French Minister of Culture, Catherine Trautmann.
At the dawn of the 21st century, Juliette Greco stands as a solid, soulful survivor of an amazing age, and Le Temps de Chanson is her love letter to that bygone era. As Fleur de la Haye writes in RFI Musique, “...the grand dame of chanson proves that her voice has lost none of its depth or its power to stir emotions." Perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre said it best when he proclaimed that Greco's voice “encompasses millions of poems."
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