This week features some musical additions by Sacha Distel, whose song “Scoubidou” coined the name of the gimp or ‘scoubies’ children still make today as trinkets. The story goes that in the 1950s a group of Distel’s fans bum rushed his hotel room and gave him some object made of electrical wire, which they called a ‘scoubidou’ in his honour. The singing of ‘scoubidou-bidou-aah’ you hear in the song ‘Scoubidou’ is a gallic version of ‘doobidoobidoo’, which you can hear in jazz music.

As of late, more music by Stefie Shock, Jacqueline Taïeb and Enzo Enzo. Talk about variety!

So much music, so little hours in a day! The Oh-la-la archive is now complete, featuring all the postings since the very beginning in May 2005. And just like with this wonderful DS at tulip time, I strive to place original pictures whenever possible.

One of the more recent French artists that fits the Oh-la-la bill is Dany Brillant, a performer I saw live this summer in Paris that had the entire room on edge for more than two straight hours. Inspired by the smoothness of Charles Aznavour and the musicality of Frank Sinatra, his lyrics are from the good old days when they were well written, but not particularly deep. Just like his predecessors, he’s an entertainer. Dany sings along to a swinging big band and plays several instruments himself.

He rarely performs outside French-speaking Europe, but then the same could be said of Charles Aznavour and countless others way back when the language was more of a barrier. Guess what? Dany can sing in English! He covered Fly me to the Moon with the best of English accents. And he sings in Italian as well. He may be old school, but he is terribly cool. The entire rows of screaming women confirmed this at the concert for two straight hours.