Guylaine Guy

Artist: Guylaine Guy

LP: French Doll
Song: "Paris est un Accordéon"
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Song: "Madame Bertrand"
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"French Doll" Guylaine Guy is a Canadian! Born in the spring of 1929 in Montreal, Guylaine got her start singing in some of her city's cabarets. Charles Trenet discovered her there in 1955 and began writing songs for her...and the rest, as they say, isn't history. That's because after touring the world and having a hit record in 1963, Gylaine retired from music to focus on her art. I've been sifting through my French-language LPs and am getting rid of quite a few, but this 1957 delight is definitely a keeper.

[ Guylaine Guy in 1957 ]

 [ Guylaine Guy in 2015 ]

Throwing Muses

Artist: Throwing Muses

EP: Firepile (Part Two)

Song: "Jak"
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I went on another online 4AD shopping spree, this time picking up a few things to fill gaps in the collection of some of my favorite lady-lead bands. I got a Tom Tom Club single (ok, not 4AD), along with two EPs by The Breeders and the two "Firepile" EPs by Throwing Muses, which I already have on CD. I'd never even seen them on vinyl before. The b-sides of these EPs offer some neat covers, like "Jak," which was originally recorded by Volcano Suns.

[ Throwing Muses circa 1992 ]

Charles Aznavour [1924-2018]

Artist: Charles Aznavour

LP: Charles Aznavour Canta en Español, Volumen 2
Song: "Isabelle"
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Song: "Si Tu Me Llevas"
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I was bummed a few days ago to read that Charles Aznavour had died earlier this month, at the age of 94. Born in France of Armenian immigrant parents, Charles' birth name was Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian, which admittedly doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. With a career in music and film spanning over 70 years, Aznavour was one of the most popular performers in the history of France. People sometimes called him the French Frank Sinatra! Charles wrote more than 1,000 songs during his career, and he claims to be one of the first to write about controversial subjects like homosexuality, referring to his lovely/sad 1972 song "What Makes a Man?" Also, he often performed with Liza Minnelli, which is pretty gay too.

I was a little surprised to discover that I don't actually own any French-language records by this international legend—only one where he sings in English and two on which he's singing in Español. Here are a couple of songs from one of the latter. (I chose this one because he's smoking on the cover, so he at least looks really French even if he's not actually singing that way.) Click here to find everything you've ever wanted to know about the life and career of Snr Aznavour, and read his New York Times obituary here. And then go here for a photo of Charles when he was very young.

Charles Aznavour

[ May 22, 1924 — October 1, 2018 ]

We will miss you, Charles.

Wade Holmes

Artist: Wade Holmes

LP: Hits Made Famous by Hawkshaw Hawkins
Song: "Lonesome 7-7203"
[ listen ]

Song: "Shotgun Boogie"
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Wade Holmes never hit the big-time, so there's really not much info about him on the Web (Discogs tells us when he lived, and says he was a fireman). Still, he does a fine job paying tribute to Hawkshaw Hawkins, a lanky hillbilly singer from West Virginia who had a string of country hits in the late 1940s and early '50s, and who died in the same plane crash that took Cowboy Copas and Patsy Cline in 1963. Hawkshaw earned the nickname "eleven yards of personality" because he was so tall (6'5" says Wikipedia; the LP liner notes hacked five inches off!) and he reportedly traded four trapped rabbits for his very first guitar. Who knows how many rabbits he traded for Jean Shepherd, who was his wife when he died at the age of 41.

PS. I donated my photo of Wade from the back of this LP to the Hillbilly-Music.com website, since they had a Wade Holmes page, but with no photo and no info on the guy. They thanked me for the photo, and said it also gave them a chance to list some biographical details they'd uncovered about Wade, which you can find here.

[ Wade Holmes: February 28, 1925 — February 27, 1999 ]