Les Chansons d'Aragon
| Les Chansons d'Aragon | ||||
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| Studio album by Léo Ferré | ||||
| Released | February 1961 | |||
| Recorded | January 10, 11, 13, 1961 at Barclay Studio, Paris (France) |
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| Genre | Chanson | |||
| Length | 32:50 | |||
| Label | Barclay Records | |||
| Léo Ferré chronology | ||||
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Les Chansons d'Aragon (English: "Songs of Aragon") is an album by Léo Ferré, released in 1961 by Barclay Records. It is his second album dedicated to a poet, after Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal in 1957. Here, Ferré focuses on former surrealist Louis Aragon, but the body of work he chooses (poetry collection Le Roman inachevé, mostly) is not surrealistic.
This album had much more impact than Ferré's first Baudelaire effort, maybe because when it was published Ferré was gaining both success and critical acclaim on stage, and Aragon was an active poet and a controversial committed communist figure in the French intellectual field.
Léo Ferré begins to set Louis Aragon's poems into music in the fall of 1958. A twelve songs album is completed in march of 1959. At that time, Ferré isn't under contract anymore. After a few refusals, Ferré ends up to sign with Eddie Barclay in 1960. Barclay seems sceptical about sung poetry and asks him to release catchy middle-of-the-road tunes before. Ferré carries the task out on Paname album, with such favorites as "Paname" or "Jolie môme" (one of his classics). This explains why album Les Chansons d'Aragon is only recorded in January and released in February 1961, two years after it was ready.
Finally the album is made of ten tracks only. This may be one of the finest cohesive album in the French early sixties popular musical field. Ferré changes most of the original titles, and sometimes dismisses some verses or change their order. Aragon, who was greatly impressed by Ferré’s adaptations, wrote a liner text wherein he recognized Ferré as a true poet and claimed that "the literary history of France [would] have to be re-written a little differently because of the contribution made by Léo Ferré".
This album is a landmark and is considered as an evergreen classic of the French song repertoire.
Texts by Louis Aragon. Music composed by Léo Ferré.
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Wikipedia