French singer Boby Lapointe, in 1963, in Paris.
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The posthumous success of Boby Lapointe, a magnificent punster who delivered the texts of his songs on a binary rhythm continues on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth and the fiftieth anniversary of his death on June 29. Back to an extraordinary character, atypical and whose repertoire knows no wear and tear.
He is one of the most beautiful anomalies of French song. Childish and tragic, audacious and disturbing, aesthetic and hairy, literary and mathematical. Spiritual son of the Jacques Brothers. A special case, singular, little inclined to success during his lifetime, Boby Lapointe was inducted into a cult singer after his death.
“There is, in literature, Boris Vian who had a posthumous glory. Boby Lapointe, it’s the same in the song. The public came to him thanks to an integral pushed by Joe Dassin and published in 1976. Usually , it often goes through a best of but here, it was squarely with all of his work. It was neither marketing nor pressure from record companies, just word of mouth. It’s something something quite unique, assures Sam Olivier, author of a 72-page booklet accompanying the recent release of the anthology Boby Lapointe turns 100.
Robust with the black eye and the emblematic marinière – physique moreover cousin of that of Captain Haddock -, Boby Lapointe continues to be a delectable curiosity. A free electron, a veritable pun machine gun, virtuoso of the counterpoint, bewitcher of paronymy, the facetious bearded man has never ceased to evolve on the margins.
“He did not correspond to any code or criteria of the time. It was something completely different in the midst of a yé-yé surge. He was not looking to work on his career and be in the era of the times”confirms his granddaughter Dany Lapointe, director of Printival Boby-Lapointe, a festival at the end of April in Pézenas (city in Hérault in which he was born and died fifty years later).
Singer by force of circumstance
A damned unusual trajectory than that of this daily prankster whose first interpreter of his songs was Bourvil in 1954 (Aragon and Castile in April Fool, film by Pierre Grangier) and who will have previously multiplied professional experiences. In bulk and in disorder: advertising copywriter, subcontractor manufacturer of panties, representative of a coffee brand, installer of television antennas, diver in La Ciotat…
“At the start, he didn’t want to sing his titles. He went to Paris with the aim of looking for people who would like to interpret them. Nobody wanted to stick to it so he got into it by force of things. It wasn’t his thing to be on stage. He was shy, uncomfortable. He did it for his songs to exist”, specifies Dany Lapointe.
We must remember his appearance in the feature film by François Truffaut (a pillar of the famous cabaret du Cheval d’Or), Shoot the pianistwhere we see him singing Raspberry with a clumsy waddle and subtitles for better understanding of the text. Or also of his deep link with a Georges Brassens who never lost an opportunity to engage him in the first part. “Well not always, since Boby tended to arrive so late that Brassens had already started. So he sometimes played after him”slips his granddaughter.
Due to late artistic debuts, there are only about fifty (good) songs in the repertoire. “As he was not a big seller, he was not offered to record albums. He only made one in 1969 thanks to Joe Dassin, him again, otherwise he would have been only a 45 rpm singer. Besides, he didn’t write that much. In the archives, there are really few unreleased songs that have not been recorded. But he wrote sketches for the cabaret, scripts for the television, plays (The bearded guy in the squarethe text of which was deposited at the Sacem in 1953, will be performed for the first time in September at the Pézenas theater and then certainly on tour, editor’s note), a mathematical system. We can again make a connection with Boris Vian. Both were jacks of all trades”notes Sam Olivier.
Always very modern
Juggler of content and form, pope of a language freed from phonetic constraints, enrolled in the National Education program (despite a theme evoking the relationship between a prostitute and her pimp, The mother of fish is a hit with children), the Piscenois singer gets out of generational confinement.
“It remains breathtakingly modern, of great insolence and unbridled inventiveness. His texts are built like mathematical problems except that afterwards, he gives us wet firecrackers, fireworks and fireworks . It’s kidding, but it’s kidding very very seriously”, analyzes Sam Olivier.
Who today to awaken his spirit? Almost obvious to ogle the side of the rappers. The song Your Katie left you isn’t it, after all, a first rap lesson? Hippocampe Fou, Nekfeu or Oxmo Puccino refer to it in particular.
“When MC Solaar received his Victoire de la Musique, he said it was thanks to consulting the dictionary and listening to Boby Lapointe”, notes Sam Olivier. Also quote Juliette, Thomas Fersen or François Morel. To know that he is part of Daho’s discotheque. “I recently learned, to my great surprise, that Clara Luciani loved her very much”, adds Dany Lapointe. It will therefore be necessary to breathe again Boby.
Boby Lapointe is 100 years old, double CD book-disc (53 titles) and 72 pages (Mercury Records) 2022