Serge GAINSBOURG writes a song for Marlène DIETRICH. 1959.

Serge Gainsbourg (1928.1991)

Autograph manuscript – Les Nanas au paradis.

A folio page on the back of a two-sheet of the printed score of his song La nuit d'objet , with an autograph note "do".

Slnd [Paris. November 1959]

“Forgetting their pain, forgetting the coal, the girls in paradise will fly away”

Gainsbourg writes for Marlène Dietrich. Rare and precious early career manuscript, first draft, of this legendary song initially intended for the icon Marlène Dietrich, Les Nanas au paradis.

Preparatory version, very elaborate, composed of around twenty verses with erasures, variants and corrections. Many passages of the text were not preserved in the version finally recorded by Catherine Sauvage in January 1960. The title remained unpublished for a long time since it was only released commercially in 1996, after the death of its author.

At the top right of the sheet, Gainsbourg also lists eight songs corresponding to the program of his singing tour at Milord l'Arsouille (or at the College Inn), at the end of 1959: “– Ronsard [58] – Recipe [of mad love] – Friedland – Charleston [of the piano movers] – Lost loves – Puncher [of Lilas] – Amour papa [L'amour à la papa] – Femme [The Wife of some under the body of others] »

_______________________________________________________

On a saxophone or accordion

girls in paradise will fly away

Sunday and Saturday evening just

when on Saturday evening after the coal

poor street girl on the way back or young tendron

for a saxophone or a nice accordion

in the arms of some pretty boy

girls in paradise will fly away

after which on a date with bleach or odeon

girls in paradise will fly away

and on their little face of love

all week at the turbine will gambergeront

on a date with bleach or odeon

and Saturday evening just after coal

girls in paradise will fly away

on a red a coup de champ or a bourbon

zinc from tobacco or good from dupont

at the stroke of midnight – the drink

on the oaths of love and under the suckers

girls in paradise will fly away

and the best of themselves they will give

on the oaths of love and under the suckers

forgetting their pain forgetting the coal

girls in paradise will fly away

the ass

_______________________________________________________

In the fall of 1959, the Théâtre de l'Étoile was to host Marlene Dietrich's recital. The event is significant: the Blue Angel has not performed on a Parisian stage since 1945. Jacques Canetti was responsible for setting up the operation consisting at the same time in promoting the record Marlène , a luxurious French pressing of the album Dietrich in Rio (orchestrated by Burt Bacharach), which Philips is preparing for release.

In New York, where negotiations began, he suggested that the singer perform a few titles in French, not dwelling on the merits of the songwriters in the Tutti catalog. Back in Paris, he prepares the arrival of the star and orders songs from Serge Gainsbourg for the upcoming recital. The press thus echoed, at the beginning of November, two songs created by the author for Dietrich: “Le Cirque” and “Les Nanas au paradis”.

Gainsbourg is definitely at ease in the art of composing for others. For the painter that he is in the first place, inspiration is born from the vision he has of the recipient of his song, sketching the outline of what he knows or feels about his personality, forcing the line until so that we can guess its identity. And when he hasn't met the performer, he does some documentation – a record, a press article, or, as a last resort, a photo.

For Marlene Dietrich, Gainsbourg turned to the Berlin cabaret, of which she was the muse. The title itself, “Les Nanas au paradis”, immediately places the song in a mix of universes: the purest Berlin cabaret of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht and the French cinema of Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert. Serge Gainsbourg takes “Nanna's Lied”, the song of a melancholy prostitute, and adds a very French color – that of the light loves of a fantasized Paris – as well as his personal touch of pessimism and misogyny.

As for the “Circus”, it is the Madame Arthur cabaret which looks towards The Threepenny Opera and all those femme fatales that Dietrich played in the cinema. From a musical point of view, a certain kinship, made of humor and jazz, links “Le Cirque” to “La Femme des un sous le corps des autres”. The melodies of “Cirque” and “Nanas au paradis” respect the codes of Berlin cabaret: the often haunting theme occupies a fairly restricted scope to let the charisma of Marlene Dietrich carry the text.

If they had been chosen by the actress-singer, the two songs would have been orchestrated by Burt Bacharach. Unfortunately, the arrival of Marlene Dietrich on November 20 in Paris caused such media excitement that the star, solicited from all sides, appeared indifferent to the care she received. She rejects the idea of ​​singing the two titles by Serge Gainsbourg on the stage of the Théâtre de l'Étoile – probably she doesn't even know who this young author is.

Contractually required to perform two titles in French, she preferred songs that had already appeared in her repertoire: “Déjeuner du matin” (Jacques Prévert and Joseph Kosma) and “Je tir ma vérence” (Pascal Bastia). We can imagine the disappointment of young Serge Gainsbourg.

A performer from the Canetti stable will, however, take over her two songs. Just as attentive as Juliette Gréco to the choice of her authors, Catherine Sauvage prepared the recital she was to give at the ABC in January 1960. Defining herself above all as an actress, she led a dual career on the theater and television fronts. song. In this second domain, she is the assiduous ambassador of the songs of Léo Ferré, which she helped to reveal to the public from the end of the 1940s. For a Philips-Réalités album, produced in 1958 by Boris Vian, she deployed the multiple resources of her talent in the songs of Kurt Weill, showing herself by turns passionate, cynical, rebellious or tremendously moving.

It was by chance that Catherine Sauvage discovered the author Gainsbourg, upon hearing “Indifferente” on the radio: “‘In your eyes I see my eyes, you’re lucky / It gives you glimmers of intelligence. “I said to myself, this one must not escape me,” she said in 1993. At the end, I heard “It was Serge Gainsbourg. » And I also learn that he is with Canetti. So I yelled at Canetti: “What?! You have this in your drawers and you haven’t told me about it?” »

Since the two songs rejected by Dietrich are now in the catalog of original works available from Tutti, Jacques Canetti hastens to offer them to Catherine Sauvage. Supported by her new accompanist, the pianist Jacques Loussier, she soon rehearses them with a view to integrating them into her singing tour. It was during one of these rehearsals that a model was engraved on an acetate disc: we find “Le Cirque” and “Les Nanas au paradis”, as well as “Il été une goose”, “L'Amour à la papa” and “The Recipe for Crazy Love”. (Text taken from the book Le Gainsbook. Sébastien Merlet. Ed. Seghers.)