Chez Muse

Earlier in the month I published a post about Renoir's film La Bête Humaine and my happy discovery on the net of a song from it together with the lyrics. That recording was only one out of hundreds of French songs contained in a remarkable website which offers weeks of nostalgia to any francophile, or at least those who are out of puberty, for most of the songs are old and many of them ancient; some are unforgettable and others are deservedly forgotten; some are sung by famous singers and some by unknowns (outside France).

The site is here, but it is unwise to log on to it unless you have time to spare, for it is difficult to look up a single song: one thing leads to another...
Here are a few. Pour yourself a Dubonnet, light a Gauloise and relax.

Gitane
Mon coeur est un violon
(both sung by Luis Mariano: I had forgotten how good he was)

Les Feuilles Mortes
(sung by Yves Montand)

Amapola
Ma ritournelle
(both sung with incomparable elegance by Tino Rossi)

Le café au lait au lit
(written and sung by Pierre Dudan—who he? It's a very silly song)

C'est si bon
(sung by Fernand Gignac, not Eartha)

Les pieds de ma soeur
(sung by Claude Gauthier; exactly the sort of thing one would expect from a 1930s song with this intriguing title)

By the way, the song which I mentioned in a post earlier in the month, which became in French Les Adieux du Soldat, was Silver Threads Among the Gold. It has one of the cheeriest lines of any love ballad: "...life is fading fast away... "
Here's John McCormack.