L'enfant au tambour

"L'enfant au tambour" is the French adaptation of "The Little Drummer Boy", itself Katherine K. Davis's "Carol of the Drum". The French text is by Georges Coulonges and was first performed in 1960 by Les Barclay, then taken up by the Petits Chanteurs a la croix de bois; Mouskouri's recording popularised it in 1965 (a bibliography lists a Fontana release in 1964). A search result attributes the music of her version to Michel Legrand, which is unconfirmed. Roch Voisine, Isabelle Boulay, Jairo and Eva Avila have also sung the Coulonges text, and Sacha Distel's 1967 Noel used a different one. In 1991 she sang it as a duet with Dorothee in the musical Le Cadeau de Noel.

Our upload, a Nana Mouskouri audio listing of the song, was tagged in the library's catalogue with the guitarist Alexandre Lagoya as well, but no source ties him to it, so this page treats the recording as hers alone. The arrangement, guitarist, studio, recording date and album were not found.