French song & variety

Hubert Giraud

Hubert Giraud (1920-2016) wrote some of the best-known French songs in the world: “Sous le ciel de Paris”, made famous by Édith Piaf, “La Tendresse”, “Il est mort le soleil” and “Mamy Blue”, a huge hit carried by Nicoletta. Born in Marseille, he spent his last years in Montreux, where he died on 16 January 2016 and where his funeral was held. His career had begun with an unlikely detour: left asthmatic by his father’s death, he had taken up the harmonica on a doctor’s advice, and it was with that instrument that he won his first engagements, in the late 1930s, with Django Reinhardt’s Quintette du Hot Club de France.