
The Sunday Times called her „voice from Cape Verde", possibly due to the fact that Mayra Andrade sings a lot of songs in Cape Verdean Creole, though she's born in Cuba and grew up in Senegal, Angola, and Germany. Her records smell a bit of the well-designed eau de toilette of all those other industry working girls mixing world music with those certain hints of Brazilian folklore, body lotion fado, and authentic leather sofa jazz/ethno feel that probably will earn her a guest job on Charlie Haden's next „Sophisticated Ladies" volume. She's got taste anyway: Her new live [...]

charles aznavour // emmenez-moi gilbert bécaud // je reviens te chercher juliette gréco // si tu t'imagines charles trenet // que reste-t'il de nos amours serge gainsbourg // la javanaise _

Highlighting Magali Noël , we also have to talk about her exceptionally seductive Strip Rock, another 50s superbabe wet dream that surely influenced young Serge G., finally resulting in Strip-tease, a showcase tune for Juliette Greco as well as for Nico – the first recording of La Prémiere Belle Dame Sans Merci in 1963, a few years before she went down to the narco underground. And even Magali's and Serge's early partner in crime, the highly distinguished Alain Goraguer, returned to the fine art of undressing with his spheric soundtrack for the science-fiction animation movie Planet Sauvage in [...]

Yep, that's him on the left: Jacques Prévert . You can easily see why Serge Gainsbourg liked this fellow: he's seldomly pictured without a cigarette. Prévert (1900-1977) was a poet, screenwriter, surrealist and theater-enthousiast, probably his best known poem is Les Feuilles M ortes. Set to music by Joseph Kosma in 1945, the song was translated four years later by Johnny Mercer. As Autumn Leaves , the chanson became a standard and has been covered many, many times (ranging from Juliette Gréco to Coldcut), but contrary to popular belief, Yves Montand wasn't the first to [...]