“But when does he sleep?” Boris Vian wondered about Jacques Canetti, the man who in the early 1950s gave his letters of nobility to the profession of artistic director, a profession he first practiced at Polydor by responding to a simple ad “Looking for a young man who loves music and speaks German”, then at Philips. This copious and fascinating biography of the producer who allowed, often against everyone’s opinion, the hatching of Brassens, Aznavour, Brel, Gainsbourg, Higelin and Brigitte Fontaine, among others, is told by his daughter. She enchants us over a musical epic starting in 1932 when her father went on tours with the cream of US jazz like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. This extraordinary personality was also the founder of Les Trois Baudets in Paris, but also the creator of the first French independent label, Jacques Canetti records. And we, we come out of the book, stunned, asking ourselves the question: but what would French song have been without it?
Jacques Canetti, the explorer – Liberation
25
previous post