The last chanteuse of the chanson française died last September at the age of 93. She was known as La Gréco, but her birth name was Juliette Gréco.
Upon her death, the world described her as the “muse of bohemian postwar Paris” and the “muse of existentialists.” The “muse” association began because Juliette Gréco had been the lover of author Albert Camus, best known for his 1942 existentialist novel, “The Stranger.” She also gained the title because she socialized with Jean-Paul Sartre, his partner Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Cocteau, Boris Vian, and others.
Juliette Gréco, the intrepid grande dame of the chanson française, and its last standard-bearer, was an internationally known singer, actress and activist. Her convictions were firmly planted: she was a feminist, a socialist and a bohemian style icon.
Her 70-year career was anchored in the French musical genre chanson française, a style of song based on storytelling born in the postwar cafés and cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris.
In a 1999 interview, Gréco called these songs “little plays,” adding: “They are typically French. We express our love in songs, our anger in songs, even our revolution… It fits into our great anarchist tradition.”
Juliette Gréco was born on February 7, 1927 in Montpellier, France, near the Mediterranean seaside. Her parents were Corsican-born Gérard Gréco and Juliette Lafeychine from Bordeaux. She was 12 years old when
World War II erupted in Europe and 13 by the time Hitler’s army was marching down the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Both Juliette’s mother and older sister worked in the Résistance, an underground political movement in occupied countries. As a result of her family’s activism, 16-year-old Juliette herself was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and imprisoned for a few months.
Afterward, she endured common postwar hardships like dilapidated housing and food scarcity, elements that were oddly paired with the joy of freedom as Charles Aznavour depicted in his classic ode, “La Bohème.” Gréco lived alone in Paris where she took acting lessons while working as a hostess at Le Tabou, a jazz joint located at 33 Rue Dauphine in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood.
Le Tabou was the bohemian mecca of Paris in the late 1940s. The club was a legendary haunt for poets, painters, writers, intellectuals and jazz musicians, including American trumpeter Miles Davis, with whom she began a romantic affair at age 22 in 1949. Their relationship endured dark chapters eventually morphing into a life-long transcontinental liaison lasting to his death in 1991.
In his memoir, “Miles, The Autobiography,” co-written by Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe, Davis wrote, “Our band was the hit of the Paris Jazz Festival. That’s where I met Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and Juliette Greco. The only other time that I felt that good was when I first heard Bird. Juliette Greco and I fell in love. Music had been my total life until I met Juliette Greco and she taught me what it was to love.”
At Le Boeuf sur le Toît cabaret Juliette Gréco remained busy planning shows and performing songs gifted to her by Miles Davis devotee, Jean Paul Sartre and his friends, Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma. The duo penned the jazz standard, “Les Feuilles Mortes” known as “Autumn Leaves” in English and was a signature number for Greco. Sartre, one of the world’s most famous intellectuals, said Gréco’s voice was “…a warm light that revives the embers burning inside of us all.”
Her last album, “Gréco Chante Brel,” launched in 2013 when she was 86. Who if not La Gréco would be bold enough to close a 70-year career by releasing an album and embarking on a final world tour two years later?
A bientôt Juliette Gréco. May your magnificent spirit be with us always. Merci pour tout.
