Parlez-moi d'amour: Original Recordings 1926-1933

"Although Boyer makes the artistic choice not to probe as deeply as Piaf, hers is a distinctive instrument with the sound of Paris ringing through it. Her artistry, as representative of interwar Paris as Tauber's was of Austria, and Coward's of London is sure to delight."
- Jason Serinus Bay Area Reporter

Few songs could be more representative of their time and place than Parlez-moi d'amour …Which is not to claim for it any startling degree of originality, as it was conceived very much in that time-honoured style in which Yvain, Scotto and other stalwart cabaret men had written for Mistinguett, for Cora Madou or for Damià. Its tune is undistinguished, its harmonic progressions predictable, but perhaps therein lies its charm, for the voice, the pace and the fairy-tale ambience of the recording combine magically make it one of the successes of popular song history, a sort of key 1930s signature song, rather as "Falling In Love Again" was to Dietrich or "Lili Marlene" to Lale Andersen. And it stuck to Boyer, stayed with her for the duration of her career. Not that Boyer ought to be lightly dismissed as a 'one-hit wonder'. In addition to becoming a cabaret artist of international standing she had many other hits, including some good sellers, but none quite as magical as this one.

Born Émilienne-Henriette Boyer near Montparnasse, Paris, in 1901, the daughter of a plumber and a dressmaker, Lucienne Boyer grew up in Vaugirard on the farm kept by her grandparents. Her childhood was a normally happy existence until 1914 when its harmony was shattered by her father's death on active service shortly after the outbreak of the Great War. With her mother at her side, Emilienne suddenly found herself at work in a French munitions factory; but every cloud has a silver lining, for it was in that situation that her talent as an entertainer was first noticed.

Boyer made her earliest cabaret appearances in 1917 at the tender age of sixteen. When the war was over, she worked in a millinery in Montparnasse and, being a duskily attractive and buxom lass, also as a model for Jean-Gabriel Domergue, Foujita and other avant-garde painters. However, the stage remained her ambition and she effected her entrance to that large and unknown world by accepting a post as a typist at the Théâtre de l'Athénée. Changing her name to Lucienne Boyer, she gradually became known through appearances in various cabarets and revues, notably at the Concordia, the Eldorado and the Michel and, by 1926, had made the first of many gramophone recordings, for Columbia.

Among these early efforts was her first substantial success, "Tu me demandes si je t'aime" (a song originally penned expressly for Cora Madou) by the Marseilles-born, Paris-based composer-guitarist Vincent Scotto (1876-1952). A key figure in the French cabaret scene who contemporaneously provided material on a regular basis for, among others, Josephine Baker and Tino Rossi, Scotto went on to pen for Boyer other successes, notably Youp et youp (1926) and the engagingly poignant Sans toi (1932).