2023-09-29 17:00:14
Guitarist Biréli Lagrène during the Antibes jazz festival, in Juan-les-Pins (Alpes-Maritimes), in June 2007. ÉRIC ESTRADE / AFP
Eleven songs with simple tunes in Biréli Lagrène plays Loulou Gasté, the guitarist’s most naive album (plethoric discography alongside the greatest musicians on the planet). A record wanted by Line Renaud, the illustrious widow of the successful guitarist and composer Loulou Gasté (1908-1995), the man of her life. They met in 1945, she was 17 years old. The charming cover is signed Ludovic Debeurme, illustrator and comic book author at Cornelius.
Also read the review: Article reserved for our Jazz subscribers: Biréli Lagrène, Zen archer of improvisation
Credits: Biréli Lagrène (guitar), Hono Winterstein (rhythm guitar), Diego Imbert (double bass). Idiom: Gypsy style, first language of Biréli and Hono. At 14, Biréli was crowned “new Django”. Which can be enough to ruin your career. Not his, since he has toured the world with the greatest musicians on the planet, gypsy style, jazz (to the highest degree), and always in Biréli style.
Repertoire, songs by Loulou Gasté, My cabin in Canada (1952), Feelings (For you) (1975), international hit with 528 interpretations: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, or the very punk The Offspring. Line Renaud considers Biréli Lagrène as “the greatest guitarist in the world”. She’s not the only one. Loulou Gasté, friend of Django Reinhardt, “admired Biréli, he adored him, he was his God”she says. “Yes, he liked me”translates the brilliant guitarist into a virtuoso of understatement.
Insane agreements
It all starts with a phone call. “Line is calling mesays Biréli Lagrène, reached by telephone. She wants me to record Loulou songs, gypsy style. I accept with joy. We choose the titles together. I start thinking about it. I reconstruct the base of the Gipsy Project, and meet at the Ferber studios [à Paris]. » Diego Imbert, the much sought-after double bassist, confirms: “We see the arrangements together, the recording is done straight away, in one or two takes. Loulou’s melodies have a particular character. I tried to play them as strictly as possible. »
Sometimes, Biréli Lagrène comes up with crazy agreements: “Luckily I manage to nab them from time to time. It gives me a boost, and that’s what makes the song stand out. Playing Loulou Gasté is a very interesting experience, an experience of simplicity which demands that one plays his melodies as accurately as possible. »
Also read the review: “The Thousand and One Lives of Line Renaud”, on France 3: the exceptional destiny of a free and committed woman
Et Feelings (For you), planetary composition? A ten-year trial in the United States to be, from plagiarism to plagiarism, reattributed to its author? A musicologist’s argument ultimately prevails: the harmonic transition between the verse and the chorus is the “Loulou touch”: “I improvised around the tune”comments Biréli soberly (very dreamy version).
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