Madelen offers to relive the greatest hits of the Toulouse singer and organizes a heritage concert at the Grand Rex on June 25.
“My colleagues live their lives to the fullest, I live it to the fullest.” At the end of the 1980s, Claude Nougaro summed up his journey like this, without imagining for a single moment that in 2024, his songs would touch the hearts of younger generations. Madelen invites you to rediscover some of the most immortal ones.
In addition, the concert We… Nougaro, offered at the Grand Rex on June 25, perfectly illustrates this posterity. Between projections of images from the INA, reworked and augmented, Mathias Malzieu, creator of the group Dionysos, will provide musical direction for an exceptional concert: around twenty artists will take turns on stage for a “contemporary reinterpretation” of verses which, when they were created, did not always find their audience.
INA
Claude Nougaro’s first album, Really casual, recorded in 1958, was a crushing failure. Sales barely reached a few hundred copies. And yet, he had an illustrious godfather, Henri Salvador, then at the height of his glory. On the back of the cover, he mentioned “the passion, the rage and the suffering of the artist”.
“To please me”
This failure does not prevent the young poet from continuing, according to his expression, to pursue the adventure with “a vital need to awaken one’s worms”. One evening in 1961, he attended a screening of Manon des Sources. As he leaves, an idea crosses his mind. He writes A little girl crying, which became his first success. In the process, in the middle of a “yé yé” wave, the young dad he has just become, transforms the essay with Cécile my daughter. She in turn paid tribute to him by creating, in 2019, a “Maison Nougaro” on a barge, at the port of l’Embouchure, in Toulouse. Visitors discover drawings as well as manuscripts of songs including Jazz and Java , born in 1964 on the Olympia stage. On the night of the premiere in front of all of Paris, her opening act triumph overshadowed the success of the headliner, Dalida!
Until the end of the 1960s, he experienced ups and downs. However, he does not take offense: “I don’t sing to please, he said, but above all to please me. In 1973, he created an event again by performing at the Théâtre de la ville at 6:30 p.m., for three weeks, to a sold-out audience. For the first time, he introduced a mixture of jazz and Brazilian rhythms into his show. He did it again in 1977, at the Olympia, where, to a shirt and black pants, he added a white scarf that went down to his knees. “My turn of song, he then declares, It’s the journey of the beating heart.” In 1981, he was the first French singer to perform in a jazz club, “Le New Morning”. On February 22, 1983, Toulouse, his hometown, offered him his first official recognition: he inaugurated the new stage of the Palais des Sports.
Claude in New York
He is thus always in the bill, except for the accountants of his record company. The financiers who succeeded Eddie Barclay, judging his accounts “slightly deficit”, give him back his contract. Morally injured, even traumatized by what he considers to be an injustice, he decides to make his lifelong dream come true: living in New York. He discovered Harlem, the “Jerusalem of Jazz” and wrote Nougayork. Back in France, he played the song to a sound engineer turned manager, Mick Lanaro. Immediately enthusiastic, he decided, without hesitation, to take the risk of producing it. It’s a triumph. On November 19, 1988, he received two Victoires de la Musique. For a new generation, he becomes an absolute icon.
The day after his death from pancreatic cancer on March 4, 2004, at the age of 74, his talent was unanimously praised. Since then, his name has been given to concert halls, streets, and schools where his songs appear on the middle and high school programs. His posterity is undoubtedly only just beginning.
