Monday 26 November 2012

Si tu m'aimes

 
Jean Sablon, source: fantomas-en-cavale.tumblr.com

I'm not going to do this too often - foist my taste in music upon you. It may be because I don't get as obsessed about music as I did in my teens and twenties, but also I'm probably foisting enough of my other opinions on you, too! I'll give you a break.

Just not today.

This post is about a song I have been trying to find online for years: Si tu m'aimes (If you love me) by Jean Sablon. On the weekend I had a garage sale and I sold the LP that I first found this track on to one very happy collector from Townsville. Don't ask me the price - Charles just had conniptions over it. The following morning I woke up with seller's regret over this - well, this and a few other newly-dispersed former possessions - but this I could remedy. I thought surely by now this was online. And, finally, I was right.

This song has always made me think of walking along an old street on a summer's night. A French street, of course. This is just the sort of track I imagine to be playing from a second storey window in an otherwise quiet and empty neighbourhood. I love the lilting piano, and Sablon was known as the French Bing Crosby, though I have heard a track of his where he pays out on that sound, hamming it up for comic effect. Anyway, this is lovely and romantic and very of an era. My personal French translator, aka my husband, Charles, says that the song is about a man warning his flirty paramour not to blow it all by unthinkingly and irredeemably hurting him. I love the last line:

Et que le bonheur suprême est fragile aux mains des imprudents.
And supreme happiness is fragile in the hands of the careless.

Please indulge me to share it with you, the link below should download it for you, it's only 3 little MBs. If you loved me you would ...

http://archive.org/download/JeanSablon-SiTuMaimes1936/JeanSablon-SiTuMaimes1936.mp3

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