Pierre Perret

Pierre Perret’s songs rendered the everyday realities of France’s working class with rare exactitude. An exceptionally skilled wordsmith celebrated for caustic humor and lighthearted sensuality, he turned ordinary colloquial speech into unexpectedly lyrical expression. Perret entered the world in Castelsarrazin on July 9, 1934, and passed a substantial portion of his teenage years inside his father’s establishment, Le Café du Pont, where he soaked up the resourceful vernacular of the laborers who formed its regular crowd. Concurrently he pursued studies in music theory and saxophone before enrolling at the Toulouse Conservatoire. In 1953 he began a three-year period of military service. Posted to the army’s musical unit, he composed his earliest material, and while later backing the emerging vocalist Françoise Lô (subsequently known as Sophie Makhno) on guitar he sometimes slipped his own pieces into the program. Agent Emile Hebey eventually noticed Perret and arranged an introduction to Eddie Barclay, owner of the label that would issue his first single, “Moi J’Attends Adèle,” in 1957. Although he maintained steady engagements on the Paris club scene, including a lengthy run at the Colombe on the Ile de la Cité, the release made little impact.

A 1958 tour of Africa and France alongside the legendary American R&B quintet the Platters was followed by a diagnosis of pleurisy. Perret spent most of the next two years in a sanatorium, where he wrote the material for his 1960 debut album, Le Bonheur Conjugal, yet sales remained modest and Barclay dropped him. He resurfaced on Vogue in 1963 with “Le Tord Boyaux” (“Rot Gut”). The track became an immediate success, moving more than 100,000 copies and confirming the sharp-edged humor that would define his songwriting throughout his career. Subsequent releases such as “Trop Contente” and “La Corrida” led to 1966’s “Les Jolies Colonies de Vacances,” the year’s most popular and widely cherished French pop song. That November he made his debut headlining appearance at the Olympia Theatre and returned two years later to record a live set. After appearing alongside Claude Autant-Lara in the 1969 film Les Patates, Perret resumed recording with 1971’s “La Cage aux Oiseaux.” His largest success to that point, 1974’s “Le Zizi” (“The Willy”), surpassed five million copies, though later work grew increasingly reflective, notably 1977’s “Lily,” which received the Prix de la Ligue Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme for its stance against racism.

He went on to examine suburban discontent in “Y’a des Gosses Dans l’Escalier,” abortion in “Elle Attend Son Petit,” and famine in “Riz Pile,” while devoting much of the 1980s to literary projects, foremost among them Le Petit Perret Illustré par l’Exemple. A 1983 journey to China supplied the impetus for the album Comment C’Est la Chine? In 1987 he issued the cookbook Au Petit Perret Gourmand and pressed forward with a three-volume modernization of La Fontaine’s Fables rendered in contemporary slang. No new album appeared until Bercy Madeleine in 1992; the following year he released Chansons de Toute une Vie, a collection containing 250 of his compositions. The 1995 arrival of Anthologie de la Chanson Érotique was eclipsed by the death of his youngest daughter, Julie, and after more than a year away from public view he returned at the end of 1996 for a lengthy engagement at the Casino de Paris that yielded another live recording. That same year he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Chanson Française and published the culinary volume La Cuisine de Ma Femme.

Perret resumed studio work with 1998’s La Bête Est Revenue, a fierce reflection on the ascent of the far-right Front National. 2002’s Cui-La maintained a focus on serious subjects such as globalization, yet 2006’s Mélangez-Vous restored the playful spirit of his earlier output. In subsequent years he issued the children’s album Pierrot Chante pour les Gamins alongside three decidedly adult collections—Le Plaisir des Dieux (2007), Les Dieux Paillards (2008), and Trésors de la Paillardise (2009)—that gathered the most risqué and libertine French songs and carried the warning “Oreilles chastes s’abstenir” (“Chaste ears should abstain”). With 2010’s La Femme Grillagée he adopted a more overtly political stance, condemning the mistreatment and subjugation of women.