"The Poor People of Paris," by Les Baxter

March to April 1956--(Six Weeks)

Instrumentals!  We have instrumentals, people!  This is not a drill!

You notice how these don't tend to top the charts anymore?  I know a lot of instrumentals were big during the heyday of disco, but you could actually dance to those--so how the heck would one cut a rug to this tune?  I could see children prancing around the classroom to "Poor People of Paris"; I could see a housewife playing it at medium volume underneath a particularly dull cocktail party.  Clearly, however, this is a genre of music that has gone the way of the dinosaurs nowadays:  orchestra leaders simply don't make the charts anymore.

I described the orchestration in "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" as having too many bells-and-whistles, but this--this is in a category all by itself.  The melody is simple and catchy, almost painfully so, so Baxter throws every musical gimmick he can think of at the listener to jazz it up.  It's all in here:  harp, glockenspiel, muted trumpet, pizzicato strings, a disembodied chorus, finger snapping, and--god help us--GROUP WHISTLING!  Yes, the chintziest of chintzy effects in the world, when the musicians put down their instruments and whistle as one!  We even get a "cute" little fakeout from Mr. Baxter in the middle, when everyone turns to their neighbor and says "Oh, that fading out means the song is over!" but NO!  The show must go on!  Seriously, this song is so cheesy, I would be surprised if it didn't end up in the background of a Ren and Stimpy cartoon at some point...

On the other hand, this may have been the last decade of the 20th century when a composer/bandleader could actually be somewhat of a superstar.  In his lifetime, Les Baxter did just about everything you could do in the music industry:  he sang backup and played piano, arranged and orchestrated, wrote lyrics, co-founded a production company, scored B-movies, wrote the theme song to the "Lassie" TV show (which also features whistling), and so on.  However, in the middle of all this, he managed to record a #1 hit under his own name--a feat that most music industry stalwarts today could only dream of.  Interestingly enough, Les Baxter also wrote a lot of "exotica" music for his orchestra (in the vein of Esquivel, NOT pornography), but apparently, that sort of thing was far too adventuresome for the 1950's pop charts.

So just how square is this song?  Well, you might be mildly interested to know that the original actually IS French:  it's an Edith Piaf tune called "La goualante de pauvre Jean" or "The Ballad of Poor John."  The original, a typically gritty tune, tells the story of  a criminal who "chooses crime over love," and ends up in prison.  For reasons unknown, some anonymous American songwriter mistook the name "Jean" for "gens" ("people," in French), and thus wrote entirely different English lyrics around the laughable conceit of "poor people" in Paris:  "I feel sorry for the French/every guy has got a wench/Every couple's got a bench/kissing shamelessly."  (Could Americans in the 1950's simply not comprehend there could be actually poverty in France?  'Cause there was, and lots of it...)  It is THIS version, not the original Piaf song, that Baxter arranged, thus fully transforming an earthy French nightclub ballade into a squeaky-clean American orchestral ditty.  Man, was this decade dull or what?

Up next:  A two minute masterpiece by a former truck driver from Tupelo changes the face of popular music forever.

PS:  Here's the original by Edith Piaf--as always, what the material lacks in musical variety, Piaf makes up for in raw emotion and streetwise authenticity.  Too bad the translation is so bowdlerized...