In 1960, passing through New York, Marcel Amont boarded a taxi whose radio broadcast a song.
This is how he discovers
True Happiness
.
As soon as he listens to the first notes, he understands that he has got a melody to his measure.
Back in France, he adapted the text and recorded it under the title
Bleu, blanc, blond
.
In a few weeks, sales of the 45 rpm exceeded 400,000 copies.
This song, which you will discover or rediscover below, is added to others, proposed by Madelen.
In the 1971 program "At close range" the most famous Béarnais recounts a journey that much later, at the dawn of his 90th birthday, he summed up as follows: "I am so happy that I am almost ashamed of it
. !”
Even in the most difficult moments of his very long career, the entertainer has never lost an eternal childish smile and a spirit that have become his trademark.
Why would it be otherwise?
Against the advice of a father who dreamed of seeing him become a lawyer, he left Bordeaux and experienced the era of the rabid cow, before a television show that changed everything.
Spotted by Jean Nohain, a pioneer in entertainment, he created the event in 1956, doing a handstand throughout the interpretation of his song.
Physically, it is no problem for him.
An accomplished sportsman, he was, among other things, university champion in the 400 meters.
Intellectually, it is something else.
The show's director is convinced that the public will not forgive him for this fantasy.
In other words, for him, it
is over, all he has to do is take the first train to the Gironde capital.
Exactly the opposite is happening.
The next day, in the families, we only talk about this stranger, so original and so funny.
The “French Danny Kaye”
This is how the career of the man who was nicknamed "the elf of song", or the "French Danny Kaye" in reference to the very popular American singer and dancer at the time, began.
Between two songs widely broadcast on the airwaves such as
Le Mexicain
,
Po po po dis
or
Le chapeau de Mireille
, signed Brassens, he gives concerts without ever being content to stand behind the microphone.
Read alsoFrom Mexican to Blue, white, blond... the unforgettable songs of Marcel Amont
In October 1962, he gave a 135-minute recital in Bobino during which, while singing, he leapt, dislocated and jumped over a table.
He plays sold out for more than 100 nights!
At the Olympia, in the early 1970s, he danced, surrounded by a dozen girls.
On the small screen, in the mid-1960s, he produced another physical performance: in Raymond Marcillac's program,
Les Coulisses de l'exploit
, hanging from rings, he performed an acrobatic number that an artist circus would not disown.
He also became a music hall headliner in Germany, Italy, Holland, Japan, Canada and the USSR.
In 1966, he gave eighteen recitals between Moscow, Leningrad and Yalta.
The Izvestia
, the major Russian daily devotes a full page to him.
"I have a heart that beats slowly and a particularly powerful breath"
, he said to explain performances whose precision required weeks of rehearsal, in front of a mirror.
A rule that he had set himself after having attended, at the end of adolescence, in Bordeaux, a recital by Yves Montand.
That evening, the interpreter of Les
Feuilles mortes
became his model, the example to follow.
Leaving the room, he said to himself:
"If one day I manage to do the same, I will not be a bell."
A formula that came to mind probably because he was a little stunned.
