Paul Mauriat
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Paul Mauriat
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| Born Paul Mauriat on March 4, 1925, in Marseille, France; died on November 3, 2006, in Perpignan, France. Education: Attended the Marseille Conservatory of Music, Marseille, France. Worked as conductor, arranger, and bandleader, Marseille, France, 1942–58; moved to Paris, 1958; (with Franck Pourcel and others) wrote "Chariot," recorded in English as "I Will Follow Him," by Little Peggy March, 1963; formed Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat, signed to Philips label, 1965; recorded "L'amour est bleu" ("Love Is Blue"), 1967; U.S. and world tours, late 1960s–1980s; signed to Pony Canyon label (Japan), 1994; gave farewell concert, Osaka, Japan, 1998; recorded more than 1,000 songs and instrumental pieces. Awards: First Prize in piano, Marseille Conservatory of Music; Grand Prix du Disque; Midem Trophy (French recording industry awards). Addresses: Record company—Pony Canyon International, 2-5-10, Toranomon, Minato-Ku, Tokyo, Japan, 105-8487. |
Orchestra leader, composer
In early 1968, with rock music of all kinds pushing new experimental boundaries, an entirely different kind of song rose to the number-one position on music sales charts in the United States and remained there. "Love Is Blue," recorded by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat, was an easy listening instrumental, instantly recognizable many decades later even for listeners who were unable to identify the name of the artist who had recorded it. Yet Mauriat's contribution to popular music did not begin or end with "Love Is Blue." By the end of the 20th century he was largely forgotten except among chroniclers of pop trivia, but his influence was greater than the size of his reputation would suggest.
Paul Mauriat (More-ee-AH) was born in the southeastern French city of Marseille on March 4, 1925. His father was a postal inspector who played classical piano on the side. When Mauriat was three or four, his father spotted his ability to play tunes straight through on the piano, and, Mauriat told Emmanuel Legrand of Billboard, "had the wisdom not to show me around like one of those brilliant young puppets." Mauriat took lessons from his father, and then, when he was ten, enrolled at the Marseille Conservatory of Music, studying violin as well as piano.
By the time he was 15, Mauriat had earned the school's top prize. At that point family finances interrupted his budding classical career; he had to take a job as a postman. He had also begun to get interested in popular music and in American jazz that had acquired a strong French following. In 1942, with the ranks of French musicians depleted by World War II, Mauriat was offered a job as a band conductor at a salary higher than his father was making. With his father's blessing, he embarked on a musical career.
For many years, Mauriat was based in Marseille and worked behind the scenes in the French music industry. He honed his skills as an arranger, and in the 1950s he toured with and worked as music director for Charles Aznavour and Maurice Chevalier, two of France's top male vocalists. He was particularly closely associated with Aznavour, for whom he eventually made a total of some 135 arrangements. In 1958, with help from bandleader and fellow Marseille native Franck Pourcel, Mauriat moved to Paris. Beginning around that time, he made occasional recordings for small French labels. Depending on the flavor of or intended market for the song he was recording, he used one of a variety of pseudonyms that included Willy Twist, Eduardo Ruo, Nico Papadopoulos, and Richard Audrey.
Among the other young arrangers working in Paris at the time was future American pop giant Quincy Jones, who was studying with French music teacher Nadia Boulanger. Jones encouraged Mauriat's efforts, which by this time had branched out into composition as well as arranging. In 1963 he scored his first major hit as a writer (under the pseudonym Del Roma, and with Pourcel and others as co-writers) with a song called "Chariot," recorded (in French) by British pop star Petula Clark. Retitled "I Will Follow Him," given new English lyrics, and recorded in the United States by teen pop singer Little Peggy March, the song topped Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. Like "Love Is Blue," "I Will Follow Him" had a long life as a pop standard, appearing in a spoof choral arrangement in the 1992 film comedy Sister Act.
In 1965 the easy listening genre was selling strongly worldwide, and the recordings of Mauriat's associate Pourcel, many of which resemble Mauriat's own, were hitting a peak of popularity. Mauriat, at the request of the Philips label, formed Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat in order to compete with Pourcel and began a busy recording schedule that often included three albums a year. No systematic discography of Mauriat's work exists, and he himself eventually lost track of the total number of his album releases, but he estimated in his interview with Legrand that he had recorded more than 1,000 individual songs. Mauriat's albums were released in the United States, but, facing strong competition from those by homegrown orchestra leaders such as Ray Conniff, they notched modest sales totals of around 25,000 copies.
In 1967 Mauriat was given a minor-key song called "L'amour est bleu" ("Love Is Blue"), written by André Popp and Pierre Cour. In a version sung by pop star Vicky Leandros, it had nearly won the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest as an entry from Luxembourg, but was edged out by Pourcel's French entry. "To be honest, I wasn't very fond of the song," Mauriat told Legrand, but since it had been issued by Philips' publishing arm he agreed to cover it. In France, Mauriat's record stalled after sales of 30,000 copies, but Minneapolis disc jockey Alan Mitchell aired the song and asked listeners to comment on it. Flooded with calls, he passed on news of his success to other radio personnel, and on February 10, 1968, the song settled in for a five-week run at the top of the charts. The album containing "Love Is Blue," entitled Blooming Hits, also rose to the number-one spot. "Love Is Blue" was the first instrumental to hit Billboard's top spot since the Tornados' "Telstar" in 1962, and it remains the only French release ever to have accomplished the feat.
Mauriat had a few other small American hits, including "Love in Every Room" and the theme song for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He never duplicated the massive success of that single song, but "Love Is Blue" cemented his international fan base, and as late as 1996 Mauriat estimated his worldwide sales at 800,000 recordings a year. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mauriat applied his arranging skills to the careers of a new generation of French singers, serving for several years as musical director for vocalist Mireille Mathieu. He and his orchestra toured the United States, Mexico, and the Far East.
Japanese (and Taiwanese) audiences had special affection for Mauriat's sentimental but very precise music, and he eventually performed over 1,000 concerts in Japan. Mauriat claimed to be the first Western performer to announce all his songs in Japanese while performing there, and in 1994, after his nearly three-decade association with Philips (and its successors) ended, he signed with a Japanese label, Pony Canyon. Mauriat chose Osaka, Japan, as the site of his final concert, in 1998. His orchestra continued to tour under the conductorship of his protégés. In 2002 a French-language biography of Mauriat, Un vie en bleu (A Life in Blue), was issued by author Serge Elhaik. Mauriat's compositional legacy lived on in the song "Guilty Conscience," modeled by rapper Eminem partly on "I Will Follow Him," but above all in the immortal melody of "Love Is Blue." Mauriat died in Perpignan, France, on November 3, 2006.
Selected discography
Blooming Hits, Philips, 1968.Mauriat Magic, Philips, 1968.More Mauriat, Philips, 1968.Prevailing Airs, Philips, 1968.Doing My Thing, Philips, 1969.The Soul of Paul Mauriat, Philips, 1969.The Christmas Album, Philips, 1970.Gone Is Love, Philips, 1970.El Condor Pasa, Philips, 1971.Classics in the Air, Philips, 1974.Love Is Blue, Philips, 1987.A Paul Mauriat Christmas, PSM, 1994.Love Is Blue: The Best of Paul Mauriat, Polygram International, 2000.Sayonara Concert, Blue Moon, 2000; reissued, Import, 2003.Best of Paul Mauriat, Universal, 2003.
Sources
Periodicals
Billboard, January 20, 1996, p. P3.
Time, March 22, 1968.
Online
"Artist Profile: Paul Mauriat," The Breeze: Easy Listening Music, http://www.radioentertainment.com/artistProfiles/pMauriat.html (November 1, 2006).
"Paul Mauriat," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (November 1, 2006).
"Paul Mauriat," Space Age Pop Music, http://www.spaceagepop.com/mauriat.htm (November 1, 2006).
AMG AllMusic Guide: Pop Artists:
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Paul Mauriat
- Genres: Easy Listening
Biography
French composer/conductor Paul Mauriat is a classically trained musician who decided to pursue a career in popular music. His first major success came in 1962, as a co-writer of the European hit "Chariot." In 1963, the song was given English lyrics, renamed "I Will Follow Him," and became a number one American hit for Little Peggy March. Mauriat is best remembered for his 1968 worldwide smash "Love Is Blue."Mauriat's ancestors were all classical musicians and he originally planned to follow in their footsteps, studying the music as a child and enrolling in the Conservatoire in Paris when he was ten years old. As a teenager, he became infatuated with jazz and popular music, which made him stray from his initial career path. At the age of 17, he formed an orchestra and began touring concert halls throughout Europe. These concerts earned him the attention of vocalist/songwriter Charles Aznavour, who hired Mauriat as an arranger and conductor. Through Aznavour, he began working with a variety of other French artists. For the remainder of the '40s and the '50s, he worked primarily as an arranger for other musicians.
Mauriat began a solo career in the early '60s, recording a series of instrumental albums that were distinguished by their sweeping, melodic strings and gently insistent contemporary rhythms. Using the pseudonym Del Roma, he co-wrote "Chariot," which became a hit for Petula Clark in 1962. The following year, the song was given a new, English lyric by Arthur Altman and Norman Gimbel and was recorded by Little Peggy March as "I Will Follow Him"; it became a number one hit in the U.S.
Throughout the '60s, Mauriat continued to record his pop instrumental albums, which became more popular as the decade progressed. His popularity peaked in 1968, when his version of "L'Amour Est Bleu" (Love Is Blue), which was Luxembourg's submission to the 1963 Eurovision Song contest, became an international hit, reaching number one on a number of charts, including America. The single was supported by Blooming Hits, an album that featured a selection of '60s pop hits; the album was massively popular and it is estimated that it sold in excess of two million copies worldwide. Mauriat became an international recording star, touring North and Latin America, Europe, and Japan, and making television appearances in several countries.
Although Mauriat's popularity dipped in the early '70s -- he only had two other U.S. hit singles, "Love in Every Room" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," which were both minor -- he continued to sell respectably throughout the world, particularly in Europe. After the '80s his recorded output slowed as his Western audience dwindled, but in the Far East he found a loyal following. Tours of Russia, China, and Japan would continue until 1998 when the conductor gave his last live performance in Osaka. A year later, former lead pianist Gilles Gambus would become conductor of the orchestra, and then in 2005 French horn player Jean-Jacques Justafre would be handed the baton. On November 3, 2006, Mauriat died in the southern French city of Perpignan. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine & Kenneth M. Cassidy, Rovi
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Paul Mauriat
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008) |
Paul Mauriat (4 March 1925 – 3 November 2006) was a French orchestra leader, conductor of Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat, who specialized in the easy listening genre. He is best known in the United States for his million selling remake of André Popp's "Love is Blue", which was #1 for 5 weeks in 1968. Other recordings for which he is known include El Bimbo, "Toccata" and "Penelope."
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Biography
Mauriat was born and grew up in Marseille, France. His father was a postal inspector who loved to play classical piano and violin. Mauriat began playing music at the age of four and enrolled in the Conservatoire in Paris at the age of 10, but by the time he was 17, he had fallen in love with jazz and popular music. During World War II, Mauriat started his own dance band and toured concert halls throughout Europe. In the 1950s he became musical director to at least two well-known French singers, Charles Aznavour and Maurice Chevalier, touring with them respectively.
In 1957, Mauriat released his first EP Paul Mauriat, a four track RGM release. Between 1959–1964 Mauriat recorded several albums on the Bel-Air record label under the name Paul Mauriat et Son Orchestre, as well as using the various pseudonyms of Richard Audrey, Nico Papadopoulos, Eduardo Ruo and Willy Twist, to better reflect the international flavour of his recordings. During this period, Mauriat also released several recordings with Les Satellites, where he creatively arranged vocal backing harmony for such albums as Slow Rock and Twist, (1961), A Malypense (1962) and Les Satellites Chantent Noel (1964).
Mauriat composed the music for several French movie soundtracks (also released on Bel-Air), including Un Taxi Pour Tobrouk (1961), Horace 62 (1962) and Faits Sauter La Banque (1964).
He wrote his first song with André Pascal. In 1958 they were prizewinners in the le Coq d'or de la Chanson Française with Rendez-vous au Lavendou. Using the pseudonym of Del Roma, Mauriat was to have his first international hit with Chariot, which he wrote in collaboration with friends Franck Pourcel (co-composer), Jacques Plante (French lyrics) and Raymond Lefèvre (orchestrator). In the United States the song was recorded as I Will Follow Him by Little Peggy March and became #1 on the Billboard charts in all categories for three weeks in 1963. In 1992 the song was featured prominently in the film Sister Act starring Whoopi Goldberg. More recently, Eminem included an extract in his song, Guilty Conscience.
Between 1967 and 1972 he wrote numerous songs for Mireille Mathieu; Mon Crédo (1,335,000 copies sold), Viens dans ma rue, La première étoile, Géant, etc. — to name but a few — and contributed 130 song arrangements for Charles Aznavour.
In 1965 Mauriat established Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat, and released hundreds of recordings and compilations through the Philips label for the next 28 years. In 1994 he signed with Japanese record company Pony Canyon, where he re-recorded some of his greatest hits and wrote new compositions. Mauriat recorded many of these albums in both Paris and London, utilising several English classical musicians in these recordings.
In 1968 his cover of the Andre Popp/Pierre Cour tune “L’Amour Est Bleu” (“Love Is Blue”) became a number 1 hit in the U.S.. The song spent five weeks at the top of the charts. Two other Mauriat singles also made the charts in the U.S - “Love in Every Room” and the title theme from the movie "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang". “Love Is Blue” was the first instrumental to hit number 1 on the Billboard charts since the Tornados hit with “Telstar” in 1962 and the only American number-one single to be recorded in France. The success of the song and the album on which it appeared, Blooming Hits, established Mauriat as an international recording star.
In 1969, Mauriat started his first world tour with his Grand Orchestra, visiting countries like the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and other Latin American countries.
In 1974 Mauriat released an entire album that paid homage to his musical roots. Classics in the Air features classical music, like Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, and Pachelbel’s “Canon”, given the “Mauriat” spin.
For several decades, some of Mauriat's compositions served as musical tracks for Soviet television programmes and short movies, such as the 1977 animated Polygon (film), "In the world of animals" (V mire zhivotnykh) and "Kinopanorama", among others.[1].
Mauriat retired from performing in 1998. He gave his final performance in the Sayonara Concert, recorded live in Osaka, Japan, but his orchestra continued to tour around the world before his death in 2006. Mauriat's former lead pianist, Gilles Gambus, became the orchestra's conductor in 2000 and led successful tours of Japan, China, and Russia. Gambus had worked with Mauriat for more than 25 years. In 2005, classical French Horn instrumentalist, Jean-Jacques Justafre conducted the orchestra during a tour of Japan and Korea. The Paul Mauriat Grand Orchestra ceased to exist after the Maestro's death in 2006.
Paul Mauriat had a special relationship with Japan, where he toured most throughout his lifetime. For this reason, Mme Irène Mauriat, Paul Mauriat's widow and only heir, authorised an exceptional concert tour led by Mr. Justafré which took place in late 2009, under the title "Merci Paul: Paul Mauriat Memorial Concert". This was the only tour authorised by Paul Mauriat's widow after his death. Mauriat was very popular in Japan and many of the CD’s of his recordings available now are Japanese imports.
After this tour, in order to avoid any confusion, Mme Irène Mauriat issued a public declaration to remind fans that Paul Mauriat left no musical successor. No other orchestra is authorised to use his name. When Paul Mauriat retired from the stage, he remained fully in charge of his orchestra's artistic direction — choice of conductors, musicians, programmes, etc. He never delegated this role, and it was his wish that the orchestra's life would end with his own.
Paul Mauriat died on 3 November 2006 in Perpignan, France, age 81.
Career and awards
Relative to his peers, Paul Mauriat has one of the largest recording catalogs, featuring more than 1,000 titles just from his Polygram era (1965–1993). He was awarded the Grand Prix (Grand Prize) from the French recording industry, a MIDEM trophy, and in 1997 won the prestigious distinction of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture. He sold over 40 million albums worldwide and held 28 tours in Japan from 1969 to 1998.
In the early to mid-1980s, Paul Mauriat appeared in several Japanese coffee and wine television commercials, which featured music from his orchestra.
A line of saxophones are named for Paul Mauriat, known as P. Mauriat Saxophones.
His 1967 single recording "Love is Blue", and the 2006 album Blooming Hits, each sold over one million copies. The single was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America in March 1968.[2]
Discography
Singles
- "Puppet on a String" (1967)
- "Love Is Blue" (U.S. #1, 1968; AC #1, 1968)
- "Love in Every Room" (U.S. #60, 1968; AC #7, 1968)
- "San Francisco" (U.S. #103, 1968; AC #16, 1968)
- "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (U.S. #76, 1969; AC #24, 1969)
- "Hey Jude" (U.S. #119, 1969; AC # 24, 1969)
- "Je T'aime Moi Non Plus" (AC #35, January 1970)
- "Gone Is Love" (AC #32, September 1970)
- "Apres Toi (Come What May)" (AC #21, 1972)
- "Taka Takata" (1972)
Albums
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See also
- Faites sauter la banque! (film, 1964)
References
- ^ Paul Mauriat's music in USSR/Russia
- ^ Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd. p. 226. ISBN 0-214-20512-6.
External links
- Paul Mauriat | About the composer and conductor
- Ma Musique – O Maestro que Encantou o Mundo
- 2009 Merci Paul: Paul Mauriat Memorial Concert
- Paul Mauriat Official Fan Club
- Gilles Gambus Fan club
- N. American home of P. Mauriat Saxophones
- Paul Mauriat – Todo por la Musica
- INTERVIEW TO MADAME IRÈNE MAURIAT, 17.10.2010
- PaulMauriat.RU ~ Russian fan club
- SERGE ELHAIK (Sep 2002). Paul Mauriat - Une vie en bleu. ISBN 978-2-9518922-0-0.
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Mentioned in
Paul Mauriat: Sayonara Concert - Live in Osaka Festival Hall
(2004 Music Film)
Jukebox Hits of 1968, Vol. 1
(1999 Album by Various Artists)
Master Serie
(1992 Album by Paul Mauriat)
L' Aigle Noir
(1961 Album by Barbara)
Classic Instrumental Hits
(2004 Album by Various Artists)
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