hypersongs

Georges Brassens

The singer-songwriter and poet from Sete who, with a guitar and Pierre Nicolas's double bass, wrote and sang some of the best-known French chansons from 1952 until his last concert in 1977.

Sete, Paris and Patachou

Georges Charles Brassens was born in Sete, then spelled Cette, on October 22, 1921, the son of Jean-Louis, a masonry contractor, and Elvira Dagrosa, who was Italian. His teacher Alphonse Bonnafe introduced him to poetry in 1936. He moved to Paris in February 1940, and was sent in March 1943 to a forced-labor camp at Basdorf near Berlin; on sick leave in March 1944 he did not return. From March 21, 1944 he lived for 22 years at 9 impasse Florimont in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, at the home of Jeanne Planche.

On January 24, 1952 he auditioned for Patachou at her Montmartre cabaret, and that year Jacques Canetti of the Trois Baudets signed him to Philips, with nine songs on 78s between April and November. He sang at Bobino in February 1953, his first album came out on Polydor in October 1953, and he made his Olympia debut in 1954 with the bassist Pierre Nicolas, who stayed for about thirty years. Radio did not play his songs until Europe no. 1 began in 1955. He set poems by Aragon, Hugo, Verlaine, Richepin, Villon and Antoine Pol to music.

Records, prizes and the last concert

His studio albums include La Mauvaise Reputation (1952), Le Vent (1953), Les Sabots d'Helene (1954), Je me suis fait tout petit (1956), Oncle Archibald (1957), Le Pornographe (1958), Les Funerailles d'antan (1960), Les Trompettes de la renommee (1962), Les Copains d'abord (1964), Supplique pour etre enterre a la plage de Sete (1966), Misogynie a part (1969), Fernande (1972) and Trompe la mort (1976); Brassens-Moustache jouent Brassens en jazz (1979) and a posthumous record of songs of his youth (1982) followed. In 1963 he won the Grand Prix international du disque of the Academie Charles-Cros, and the Prix Vincent-Scotto for Les Trompettes de la renommee. On June 8, 1967 he received the Academie francaise's Grand Prix de poesie, sponsored by Marcel Pagnol and Joseph Kessel. He bought the moulin de la Bonde in Crespieres in 1958.

He rarely left France after 1952, playing in Belgium, Switzerland, North Africa and for a month in Canada in 1961; he played Cardiff in 1970 and in 1973, when Jake Thackray opened at the Sherman Theatre. His last concert was at Bobino on March 20, 1977. He died on October 29, 1981, aged 60, in Saint-Gely-du-Fesc, and is buried at the cimetiere Le Py in Sete. The Parc Georges-Brassens opened in Paris in 1984, and Sete marked the centenary in 2021 with events and a Robert Combas exhibition at the Musee Paul Valery. Flanders and Swann adapted "La Guerre de '14-'18", and Paco Ibanez sang a Spanish "La mala reputacion". Pierre Louki wrote Avec Brassens (1999) and Bernard Lonjon Brassens, les jolies fleurs et les peaux de vache (2017).

Albums

Songs

  • La Non-Demande en mariage Supplique pour etre enterre a la plage de Sete · 1966

    A song of 1966 that turns the formal marriage proposal inside out, on the second side of an untitled album.

Sources

  1. Georges Brassens, Wikipedia
  2. Georges Brassens, Wikipedia (French)
  3. The world of Georges Brassens, BCU Lausanne (2025-06)
  4. Top 15 des chansons de Brassens, 10h26