Singer, actor had lifelong love affair with Quebec
The death of French singer Charles Aznavour closes a long and storied chapter of Quebec’s musical history.
The singer and actor, who died Monday at the age of 94, left an indelible impression on the province, one he visited frequently over the course of his career.
It’s a love story that didn’t begin recently. In 1948, about two years after coming to the notice of French singer Edith Piaf, Aznavour played at the Faisan Doré, a Montreal nightclub where, with pianist Pierre Roche, he performed a series of shows for a year and a half. He also became friends with other Quebec singers including Jacques Normand and Monique Leyrac.
It was at this moment that Aznavour’s career in North America began to take off, even though it had yet to do so on the other side of the Atlantic.
It was also during this period — the 1950s — that some tried to dissuade Aznavour from continuing his singing career. He was told he was too small, too untrained. And above all ... that voice.
“The teachers I spoke to were categorical, they advised me not to sing,” Aznavour recalled. “I sang anyway.”
Born in 1924 in France to Armenian parents, Aznavour would end up knowing success in France at the beginning of the 1960s and a memorable series of shows at the Alhambra in Paris in 1957 where he had a hit with “Je m’voyais déjà.” But still he returned to Quebec.
“I came here as a ‘maudit Français,’ but very quickly I almost became a Québécois,” he said when receiving the Ordre national du Québec in 2009. That year, the Université de Montréal awarded him an honorary doctorate for his “contribution to francophone culture.”
During a career that spanned six decades, Aznavour regularly headlined in Quebec. And even if he always insisted he would never have a farewell tour, that is precisely what he did in 2002 — albeit while leaving the door open to a return.
It was a door the singer, well known for his support of Armenia, would walk through three years later with a tour that began in Quebec. He came back in 2008 for the 400th anniversary of Quebec City.
A few days before performing on the Plains of Abraham, Aznavour was named an honorary member of the Order of Canada, saying during the ceremony “Armenia is my soul and Quebec is more my heart.”
Quebec singer Robert Charlebois, who attended the ceremony, revered Aznavour, saying that meeting him “is like meeting the pope ... the pope of French song. And for the longest time he has always been the most Québécois of French singers.”
Over the course of his career, Aznavour performed with numerous Quebec artists, including Céline Dion and Gilles Vigneault as well as participating in numerous shows in the province.
“We are the writers of songs that deal with daily life,” Aznavour said during an interview in 2000. “Daily life is important, because it’s through the little things in life that we speak to people, that we lift a little of the weight of their problems.”
Aznavour, who sang of the love affairs of youth, unsatisfying love affairs or love affairs that failed, was married three times.