French crooner Henri Salvador, who first went on stage in the cabarets of pre-war Paris and played guitar with Django Reinhardt, died in Paris on February 13 aged 90, his record company announced.
Salvador helped introduce France to rock’n’roll, inspired the invention of bossa nova in Brazil and was a pioneer of the music video. He was performing on stage up until the end of last year.
He died at his Paris home of a brain haemorrhage, according to Polydor records.
Born in French Guiana in 1917, Salvador spent 73 years pleasing the public with his mix of hoofing, goofing and jazz-inspired chanson.
”Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Bloody hell, you’re nearly 90!’ Luckily my wife is on hand to remind me that I’ve never looked my age,” he said with a cackle in an interview last year as he prepared for his farewell tour.
”It’s like a drug. I remember one of the first times I went on a really big stage was in Brazil in the war, when I had to perform before tens of thousands of American soldiers.
”I did my first gag, and suddenly there was this roar” — he roared — ”coming from the audience. It hit me like a wave of pleasure, and I remember thinking, so that’s what it’s like, ” he said.
Salvador’s love affair with the audience began in 1933 when, as a young musician-cum-funnyman, he got his first slots on the Paris nightclub scene. He was spotted by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt who took him on as an accompanist, and he then joined the black American jazz violinist Eddie South.
In World War II, Salvador found himself on the French Riviera where he was recruited by band leader Ray Ventura. Ventura was Jewish and Salvador was black, so their decision to leave Vichy France, the wartime regime that collaborated with the Nazis, was opportune.
Later Salvador established himself in Paris as a songwriter and performer, and in 1956 crossed the Atlantic for an engagement on The Ed Sullivan Show, the hugely popular United States TV variety series. Inspired by the new sounds sweeping the US, he teamed up with French cult writer Boris Vian to make some of France’s first rock’n’roll hits.
Around this time his song Dans mon Ile (In My Island) inspired the Brazilian musician Tom Jobin, regarded as the inventor of bossa nova. Jobin later told Salvador that hearing the song gave him the idea of slowing down the samba beat and introducing more melody.
In the 1960s, Salvador had a series of novelty hits such as Juanita Banana, Twist SNCF and Minnie Petite Souris (Minnie the Little Mouse), all of them accompanied by humorous film-clips that were the precursor of today’s music videos — and are now easy to view on the internet.
And since then he was never been far from the public eye, with television variety shows, concerts and new albums — the latest, Reverence (Final Bow), came out in 2006. — Sapa-AFP