La Belle Vie, Scoubidou, Le Soleil de ma vie... The ten golden songs of French crooner Sacha Distel

Sacha Distel is to song what Jean-Paul Belmondo and Louis de Funès are to cinema: a symbol of the joie de vivre that programmers and advertisers around the world are bringing back from oblivion.

For Laurent Distel, the singer's son, the interpreter of

is still in perfect symbiosis with the times, eighteen after his death.

It offers an anthology of ten songs by the man Liza Minelli considered to be one of the greatest and most gifted charm singers of the 20th century.

With a nugget: Sacha Distel accompanied by Ray Ventura in person!

Read alsoSacha Distel, in sync with the times

1.

La Belle vie

is an essential song that looks like him.

The serenade of a seducer who smiled at life and had a playboy physique.

He called it

Composed by Sacha Distel himself, written by Jean Broussolle and by Jack Reardon in its Anglo-Saxon version (

),

is one of his great international hits.

A title widely taken up by advertisers.

2.

“Distelian” optimism par excellence.

Sacha Distel and his accomplice Maurice Tézé adapted

composed by Burt F. Bacharah for the film

with Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

When this western had its premiere at the cinema in London, it was the English version by Sacha Distel that appealed.

She launched her career in England.

The title is a nod to

immortalized by Gene Kelly.

features on soundtracks to blockbusters like

and

.

Here Sacha in duet with the late Joëlle of the mythical group Once upon a time sings

3.

Brigitte Bardot and Sacha Distel had a great love affair in the late 1950s. As with Gainsbourg and her

Bardot recorded a duet with her singing fiancé.

Jean Brousolle adapted them

, Stevie Wonder's planetary hit in 1972. Laurent Distel, who manages his father's posthumous career, recently found an English version of this mythical duet.

4.

This cover of a standard by Lucienne Boyer, superstar between 1918 and 1939, illustrated the vaccination campaign against covid financed by the French State in May 2022.

5.

After

, Ma femme is the unmissable hit, the most listened to on the Internet.

Laurent Distel carefully keeps the gold record in his living room.

Released in 1982, this song is a tribute to his wife, Francine Distel, former ski champion and mother of his two sons.

This title is a safe bet for wedding playlists.

5 .

In 1966, Distel makes us laugh at a fire.

On a tune of carnival samba, the soldiers of fire are summoned dare-dare with their large ladder.

Half a century later, the title is still popular among firefighters.

In the barracks, the song is systematically broadcast at the time of the balls on July 14.

6.

At the end of the 1950s, Sacha Distel was a great jazz guitarist.

He lives a great love story with Brigitte Bardot and refuses to be reduced to the role of "

".

He launches into the whimsical song.

On the way to the Casino d'Alger where Sacha Distel is to give a recital, his accomplice Maurice Tézé notices that they lack a title.

At the foot of the plane, he adapts in two seconds the American hit song

by Peggy Lee.

Pranksters, the two Frenchmen add the word Scoubidou which they invent, inspired by a jazzman's scat, "

".

will definitively launch Sacha Distel's singing career in 1959.

7.

Rebecca and I, when you're not there, we party, we dance, we drink, we play music...

This naughty song, co-signed by Maurice Tézé and Gérard Gustin, amused cabaret lovers and all those lit by night in 1966. A nugget to rediscover.

8.

Sacha Distel's uncle, Ray Ventura (1908-1979) was a renowned composer and conductor.

In the 1930s, he played a very important role in promoting jazz in France.

In 1938, Ray Ventura recorded with his orchestra,

.

A resolutely optimistic text written as the world is about to fall into a planetary war.

40 years later, Sacha Distel takes up the hit of “

”, in duet with Henri Salvador, his master, the one who taught him the first guitar chords.

9.

This classic with calypso, ska and reggae tunes comes from Trinidad in the Caribbean.

It became a worldwide success in the 1960s. Maurice Tézé adapted it for France.

Sacha Distel will sing it just like Dalida and the Creole Company.

1O.

In his early days in the 1950s, Sacha Distel quickly established himself in Saint-Germain-des-Prés as a great jazz guitarist.

Composed by Sacha Distel at the same time as

who will become

this title is reminiscent of

a by Quincy Jones.

Here, Sacha Distel is himself on the guitar accompanied by the greatest jazzmen of the time such as the pianist Raymond Le Sénéchal.