Charles Aznavour dead at age 94
Crooner and actor was known as France’s Frank Sinatra
PARIS — Charles Aznavour’s performing career endured eight decades, with a prompter in his final years the sole concession to age — or to difficulty recalling a 1,000song repertoire.
Known as France’s Frank Sinatra, the dapper crooner and actor, who got his start as a songwriter and protege of Edith Piaf, died Monday at 94.
His versatile tenor, lush lyrics and kinetic stage presence endeared him to fans the world over, but nowhere more so than in France. He sang to sold-out concert halls into his 90s and said he wrote every single day.
“I throw most of it away. You write first, judge later,” he said in a 2015 interview before the release of the album “Encores.”
Often compared to Sinatra, Aznavour started his career as a songwriter for Piaf, but it was she who took him under her wing, encouraging him to sing his own material. Like her, his fame ultimately reached well outside France, including being awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2017.
“What were my faults? My voice, my size, my gestures, my lack of culture and education, my honesty, or my lack of personality,” the fivefoot-three-inch-tall performer wrote in his autobiography. “My voice? I cannot change it. The teachers I consulted all agreed I shouldn’t sing, but nevertheless I continued to sing until my throat was sore.”
In his career, Aznavour wrote upward of 1,000 songs, for himself, Piaf and other popular French singers. The love ballad “She” topped British charts for four weeks in 1974 and was covered by Elvis Costello for the film “Notting Hill.”
Aznavour sold more than 180 million records, according to his official biography. He broke an arm in May but was set to start a new tour in November in France, starting in Paris.
He resisted description as a crooner, despite decades of torch songs that are now firmly fixed in the French lexicon.