Hugues Aufray

French folk troubadour Hugues Aufray positioned his work against the yé-yé sound that ruled French pop charts throughout the mid-1960s. Although he regularly translated songs by his idol Bob Dylan into French, Aufray became a popular favorite whose own pieces, above all “Santiano” and “Celine,” soon passed into everyday French usage. Born August 18, 1929, in Neuilly sur Seine, he spent much of his teenage years at a Dominican school in southern France after the German occupation compelled his family to abandon their home. Following his parents’ divorce he moved with his father to Madrid, came back to Paris in 1948 to enroll at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and supported himself by singing in the streets. He abandoned his studies a year later to complete military service in the Alps with the mountain infantry.

Throughout the 1950s Aufray performed in Parisian bars and cabarets, building a repertoire centered on Latin American folk material and the songs of Georges Brassens. Greater recognition arrived only in 1959 when he won an amateur contest organized by radio station Europe n°1. The victory secured a contract with Barclay, and before the year ended he released his first single, “Y’avait Fanny Qui Chantait.” Maurice Chevalier heard the record and invited Aufray to appear in the United States as part of the all-star revue “New York au Bal.”

Aufray remained in New York for several weeks. After a short return to Paris he crossed the Atlantic again, where he met folk stars Peter, Paul & Mary and an emerging songwriter named Bob Dylan. Back in France he carried several Dylan songs with him and adopted the skiffle style then popular among students on both sides of the ocean. The 1961 single “Santiano” became his first hit and introduced a modern folk standard that later generations of schoolchildren continued to sing. Two years afterward he represented Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest with “Dès Que le Printemps Revient” and served as opening act for Johnny Hallyday at the Olympia. In 1965 the album Aufray Chante Dylan brought him wider fame across much of western Europe. The 1966 hit “Celine” further strengthened his standing, yet in 1970 he shifted direction with Avec Amour, a collection of intimate love songs written for his wife Helene. Reactions proved uneven, and Aufray withdrew for a time to his farm in the Ardeche. He reappeared in 1973 with headline shows at the Paris cabaret Tête de l’Art and a series of “Espace Vert” concerts at the Théâtre de la Renaissance.

For the rest of the decade Aufray alternated brief public returns with long periods at his country home. The 1976 album Aquarium preceded a short solo tour, and two years later he issued the double set Transatlantic, which he promoted with a three-month engagement at the Paris cabaret Don Camillo. The releases Hugues in 1980 and Caravane in 1982 appeared without live activity, but in 1983 he returned to the stage at the Olympia and undertook a brief African tour. Petit Homme followed in 1985, by which time radio and the press largely ignored his work. He retained a devoted cult audience, however, and marked his thirtieth anniversary as a recording artist in 1991 with sold-out Olympia performances that later yielded the 1993 live album Route 91. With 1995’s Aufray Trans Dylan he revisited the source of his earliest inspiration, and at age seventy he released Chacun Sa Mer in 1999, an album shaped by Celtic and Latin traditions. In 2005 Hugues Aufray Chante Félix Leclerc paid tribute to another formative influence, the Quebecois artist whom Aufray credited with guiding his choice to write and sing in French.