His name was known to fans of French song for having appeared on multiple recordings as an arranger or orchestra director. Alain Goraguer – known as “Go-Go” in the profession – died on Monday February 13, in Paris, at the age of 91. With him disappears the dean of a profession essential to musical production, which occupied a good place in The Arrangers of French Song (Textual), published by Serge Elhaïk in 2018.
Met by The world in January 2019, the musician defined his two main areas of intervention as follows: « Arranger, it is to rectify a melody written with awkwardness so that it is elegant. It can be a harmonic passage, a change of tone. To orchestrate is to dress by instrument, to find a countermelody which helps the song to live. » Two specialties in which he will have excelled. Three examples, all drawn from 1965, will allow us to appreciate his contributions: the oboe line of The mountain (Jean Ferrat), the roped cavalcade of Wax doll, sound doll (song by Serge Gainsbourg and Eurovision grand prize for France Gall) and the mechanical piano of P’tits Papiers (Gainsbourg again, for Régine).
If the service record of this child of jazz alone constitutes a history of French song during the 1960s and 1970s, three names stand out on his itinerary: Vian, Gainsbourg and Ferrat. The first is the one who will have made it known thanks to the music of I drink, The Java of the Atomic Bombs or Hurt me, Johnny (sung by Magali Noël).
The two met in 1954 in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, introduced by singer Simone Alma, of whom Goraguer is the pianist. Born on August 20, 1931 in Rosny-sous-Bois, in the Paris region, this son of a gendarmerie officer did not follow the classic career of arranger-orchestrators since he did not go through the conservatory, even if he will make up for it by training in harmony and counterpoint with Julien Falk. In Lyon, he is the one who animates the “surprise parties” organized by his sister. For improvisation, he takes as models Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson or Bud Powell. And publishes, in 1956, as a trio leader the album Go… Go… Goraguer.
Protean talent
Goraguer begins to work for the cinema, in particular in 1959 for the film I’ll go spit on your graves, based on the novel by Boris Vian, the first of which will be fatal to the writer, struck down by a heart attack. The arranger then began a collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg and will be associated with the singer’s “blue period”, dominated by jazz, mambo, cha-cha-cha or twist, with classics such as The Puncher of the Lilacs, Black Trombone or Intoxicated Man.
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