Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
French entertainer, jazz guitarist and singer, known for the hit 'Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head' and starring in Chicago in the West End.
On the island
Eight records
I love male voices and and crooners. Uh I I still could never define what crooner means. But among those and the very I should say the very few left of us, Tony Bennett is is probably one of the people, of the singers I really love.
Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit
And who, to me, invented everything of the modern era? It's the great Maurice Ravel. And among the most easy listening for a popular ear, for everybody's ear, from the works from Revel is The Walls. I think everything is there.
Yes, well it has to be and uh that's a great arrangement uh by by a Nelson Ritter called Eptide. And we were talking about Maurice Ravel, I'll say the French winner just before. And that's a good example, I think, of a great singer being accompanied by a great orchestra, very much inspired by Maurice Ravel.
And I remember they went to club, and he started to play, and he played a song called When Lights Are Low. And and that really, you know, struck me, you know, and then that that song played by Mais kept in my mind and in my heart ever since.
So there's there's a music type of music I like very much because in 1961 I went to to sing at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro and on the first night somebody I knew there said, Well there's a club with some young musicians there. You you should I'm going to take you there. You're going to hear some different music. It's wonderful and different.
Sacha Distel, Martin Taylor and the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra
It's me. Pardon my accent, uh but it's really a thing I think it's the record I've done in through all my career which I like best.
And there's a great American guitar player who unfortunately died when he was very young and uh I think he probably influenced all the jazz guitarists of today. And this guitar player is called Wes Montgomery.
Come Rain or Come ShineFavourite
And uh there's a song, a beautiful standard, and we c we'll come back to Sinatra if you allow me to, with a great Don Costa arranging of a a great song and a Beautiful big b large orchestra with the symphonic tendency with the jazz. to it, which is the story of my life in a way.
In conversation
Presenter asks
10:12How old were you when they came to take your mother away?
That was uh forty three, ten years. On february seventh, nineteen forty three, French police came for resistance. And uh b being Jewish, although wearing the the yellow uh star. People would, you know, uh call and say that she's doing this, he's doing that and and they would just get under arrest and and sent into camps.
Presenter asks
11:05Why did you try to play the piano at that point [when they came for your mother]?
to to to give some emotion to those guys. And uh nothing worked. They took her away that morning.
Presenter asks
16:02What effect therefore [did the war have on you]... it must have had a lasting effect on you and your attitude.
Yes, that that gives you a maturity before the age, that's for sure. And I was really I mean, for years and years still now, yeah, I think of it with shivers, you know, and uh there are quite a few things in my life that have been doing or not doing, just reminiscing, just thinking of what happened in those days, and I'm very cautious about everything, for sure.
The keepsakes
The luxury
a grand piano, possibly a Bechstein
a grand piano of one of the two good labels, possibly of Beckstein, because then I would have the time to properly learn.
Presenter asks
18:59Why was that awful [when the press found out about you and Brigitte Bardot]?
And the thing was that just after God created woman was the the moment in her life where everybody in the world would would want her for something. But it meant that once you was working you had to be around. And if she was going to do a film in a different city from where I was, that became hard. And I I you know, I could find out that it was going to be like that, and I wanted to be Sasha Distell, being a man and not just Bridget Bardo's companion. And and that's how finally, in in a few months, we could see that although we exchanged rings, We s I found out she was not gonna be the mother of my children.
Presenter asks
25:06Which did you prefer singing in? English or French?
For me, uh being a jazz musician and having a an an English ear, uh English thought ear, I think singing in English is a lot easier. You know, we have a lot of en on all the nasals, en and then the hard sound like tran, tron, pron, pran, you know, in French. You I know you found it very romantic, but for us sometimes it'll be difficult to say.
Presenter asks
26:18You had a couple of bouts of cancer, have you not?
Well, you know, I mean, the thing is, you know, funnily enough, was in seventy, nineteen seventy when I was playing the London Palladium, found out. Which was not the thyroid, which was not the easiest way to manage, you know, playing like ten shows a week at the London Palladium and I also lost my father... And then the second time was about eleven, ten, eleven years later, which is around eighteen eighty one. I had a the problem with the skin and uh The melanoma... That led in melanoma, yeah, that's that one in that led me into uh one year. chemotherapy in in the days where it was not handled like it is now and it was really Very difficult.
“I was by that time forty five was what eleven years. I've grown up for a year and a half. And I actually my age was a hundred and fifty.”
“I wanted to be Sasha Distell, being a man and not just Bridget Bardo's companion.”
“there's always a good side, which everybody sees and knows about. And unfortunately, there's always the other side, which I'm trying not to show too much, because everybody's got his own problem, and they've got enough with theirs, they don't need mine.”