Such a sad day 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/01/charles-aznavour-french-singer-dies-aged-94
Charles Aznavour, the 'Frank Sinatra of France', dies aged 94
Singer best known for ballad She sold 100m records and had parallel acting career
Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Kim Willsher in Paris
Mon 1 Oct 2018 14.49 BST First published on Mon 1 Oct 2018 13.14 BST
Shares
16,233
Charles Aznavour on stage in Geneva in March
Charles Aznavour on stage in Geneva in March. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/EPA
The French singer Charles Aznavour has died at the age of 94, French media have reported, citing his spokesman.
Aznavour, who was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris to Armenian parents, sold more than 100m records in 80 countries and had about 1,400 songs to his name, including 1,300 he wrote himself. He was sometimes described as the French answer to Frank Sinatra because of his stirring, melancholic style.
He left school aged nine to become a child actor and went on to have a successful parallel acting career, most notably appearing in François Truffaut’s new-wave classic Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player), Claude Chabrol’s Les Fantômes du Chapelier (The Hatter’s Ghost), and the 1979 Oscar-winning film adaptation of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum.
Charles Aznavour with Nicole Berger in Shoot The Piano Player.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charles Aznavour with Nicole Berger in Shoot The Piano Player. Photograph: Allstar/Astor Pictures
His singing career was forged in occupied Paris during the second world war, performing in cabarets as his parents secretly worked with the resistance, hiding Jews, communists and others in their apartment. “French is my working language but my family language is always Armenian,” he said in 2017.
Aznavour opened for Édith Piaf at the Moulin Rouge and the popular singer was an early adviser – and flatmate. “I brought her my youth, my madness; she loved my whole jazzy side,” he told the Guardian in 2015. She advised him to have a nose job, only to declare, “I preferred you before” after the surgery.
He is one of the most celebrated exponents of the French “chanson” form – easy-listening songs with vivid lyrics, rich in storytelling, emotion and humour. One early song, 1955’s Après l’Amour, was banned on French radio for its depiction of a couple basking in post-coital happiness. 1972’s What Makes a Man, meanwhile, is sung in the persona of a gay man who faces down homophobia to declare: “Nobody has the right to be / The judge of what is right for me.” He became perhaps best known for his gloomier numbers – the director Jean Cocteau once quipped: “Before Aznavour, despair was unpopular.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Advertisement
His biggest hit in English was She, a 1974 romantic ballad in which Aznavour confronts the equal joy and strife in a relationship, nevertheless declaring “the meaning of my life is she”. It spent four weeks at No 1 in the UK singles chart, and was also recorded in French, German, Italian and Spanish. The song got a second lease of life when it was covered by Elvis Costello for the soundtrack to the 1999 film Notting Hill, reaching No 19 in the UK. Aznavour’s only other solo hit in the UK was with The Old Fashioned Way, which reached the top 40 in 1973.
Over the years he recorded duets with the likes of Sinatra, Elton John, Céline Dion, Bryan Ferry, and Sting, as well as the classical tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. In 2010, he recorded Un Geste pour Haiti Chérie, a song with young French rap stars, to help raise money after that year’s devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Charles Aznavour, the 'Frank Sinatra of France', dies aged 94
Read more
Another singing partner was Liza Minnelli, with whom he also had a brief love affair, telling the Telegraph in 2014: “She learned from me. She says that herself – or else I would have shut my mouth!”
The ballet director Sir Matthew Bourne paid tribute to Aznavour, saying he was “considered to be one of the greatest live interpreters of song. Was lucky enough to see him at Royal Albert Hall last year. His performance of his own song What Makes A Man A Man [sic] was unforgettable.”
Piers Morgan recalled interviewing him, saying: “One of the greatest singers the world has seen & such an intelligent, eloquent, graceful & charming man.”
At the unveiling of Aznavour’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame in 2017, director Peter Bogdanovich said: “Sinatra once said every song is a one-act play with one character, and Charles is an extraordinary actor as well as an extraordinary singer.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/01/charles-aznavour-french-singer-dies-aged-94
Charles Aznavour, the 'Frank Sinatra of France', dies aged 94
Singer best known for ballad She sold 100m records and had parallel acting career
Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Kim Willsher in Paris
Mon 1 Oct 2018 14.49 BST First published on Mon 1 Oct 2018 13.14 BST
Shares
16,233
Charles Aznavour on stage in Geneva in March
Charles Aznavour on stage in Geneva in March. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/EPA
The French singer Charles Aznavour has died at the age of 94, French media have reported, citing his spokesman.
Aznavour, who was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris to Armenian parents, sold more than 100m records in 80 countries and had about 1,400 songs to his name, including 1,300 he wrote himself. He was sometimes described as the French answer to Frank Sinatra because of his stirring, melancholic style.
He left school aged nine to become a child actor and went on to have a successful parallel acting career, most notably appearing in François Truffaut’s new-wave classic Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player), Claude Chabrol’s Les Fantômes du Chapelier (The Hatter’s Ghost), and the 1979 Oscar-winning film adaptation of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum.
Charles Aznavour with Nicole Berger in Shoot The Piano Player.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charles Aznavour with Nicole Berger in Shoot The Piano Player. Photograph: Allstar/Astor Pictures
His singing career was forged in occupied Paris during the second world war, performing in cabarets as his parents secretly worked with the resistance, hiding Jews, communists and others in their apartment. “French is my working language but my family language is always Armenian,” he said in 2017.
Aznavour opened for Édith Piaf at the Moulin Rouge and the popular singer was an early adviser – and flatmate. “I brought her my youth, my madness; she loved my whole jazzy side,” he told the Guardian in 2015. She advised him to have a nose job, only to declare, “I preferred you before” after the surgery.
He is one of the most celebrated exponents of the French “chanson” form – easy-listening songs with vivid lyrics, rich in storytelling, emotion and humour. One early song, 1955’s Après l’Amour, was banned on French radio for its depiction of a couple basking in post-coital happiness. 1972’s What Makes a Man, meanwhile, is sung in the persona of a gay man who faces down homophobia to declare: “Nobody has the right to be / The judge of what is right for me.” He became perhaps best known for his gloomier numbers – the director Jean Cocteau once quipped: “Before Aznavour, despair was unpopular.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Advertisement
His biggest hit in English was She, a 1974 romantic ballad in which Aznavour confronts the equal joy and strife in a relationship, nevertheless declaring “the meaning of my life is she”. It spent four weeks at No 1 in the UK singles chart, and was also recorded in French, German, Italian and Spanish. The song got a second lease of life when it was covered by Elvis Costello for the soundtrack to the 1999 film Notting Hill, reaching No 19 in the UK. Aznavour’s only other solo hit in the UK was with The Old Fashioned Way, which reached the top 40 in 1973.
Over the years he recorded duets with the likes of Sinatra, Elton John, Céline Dion, Bryan Ferry, and Sting, as well as the classical tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. In 2010, he recorded Un Geste pour Haiti Chérie, a song with young French rap stars, to help raise money after that year’s devastating earthquake in Haiti.
Charles Aznavour, the 'Frank Sinatra of France', dies aged 94
Read more
Another singing partner was Liza Minnelli, with whom he also had a brief love affair, telling the Telegraph in 2014: “She learned from me. She says that herself – or else I would have shut my mouth!”
The ballet director Sir Matthew Bourne paid tribute to Aznavour, saying he was “considered to be one of the greatest live interpreters of song. Was lucky enough to see him at Royal Albert Hall last year. His performance of his own song What Makes A Man A Man [sic] was unforgettable.”
Piers Morgan recalled interviewing him, saying: “One of the greatest singers the world has seen & such an intelligent, eloquent, graceful & charming man.”
At the unveiling of Aznavour’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame in 2017, director Peter Bogdanovich said: “Sinatra once said every song is a one-act play with one character, and Charles is an extraordinary actor as well as an extraordinary singer.”
