Boby Lapointe

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Sculpture by Boby Lapointe

Robert Lapointe, who was called Boby Lapointe (born April 16, 1922 in Pézenas , Département Hérault , France ; † June 29, 1972 ibid), was a French singer who was known for his lyrics rich in puns and shoddy rhymes .

For the cabaret artist Thomas Pigor , Boby Lapointe is a classic role model because of his joy in formal experimentation, which is in stark contrast to today's conformity.

Childhood and academic years

His eccentric nature, prone to crude jokes, was already evident in his youth. He mocked the citizens and ridiculed the good society and the clergy .

He originally wanted to be a test pilot. As a schoolboy, he constructed flying machines, which he sustained many injuries during testing.

After graduating from the Baccalauréat , he began studying at the École Centrale and the Sup-aéro in order to satisfy his passion for aviation and mathematics. He invented an automatic transmission for automobiles that other designers were later able to market successfully.

The war

In 1942 he was deported to Linz for forced labor by the German occupying forces . He fled that same year and returned to his home region in France in 1944 after a seven-month odyssey under various false names (including Robert Foulcan - “fout le camp” = colloquial for “get away”). Lapointes stature and physical strength allowed him to become a diver in the port of La Ciotat and thus to escape the manhunt initiated by the German occupation forces and the local militia.

His love for words and his love of writing encouraged him to compose chansons that are full of puns, puns and shoddy rhymes . His marginal intellectual style was not enough to make him a successful chansonnier . He edited collections of poetry as well as essays on puns and looked for interpreters for his chansons. However, Lapointes' style was a deterrent: at a Gala de la Chanson in Juan-les-Pins, Les Frères Jacques ( Quatuor vocal ) rejected a collaboration proposed by Lapointe, appalled by the complexity of his pun-peppered texts.

The beginnings and the success

After the end of the war in 1946 he married Colette Maclaud, with whom he had two children, Ticha and Jacky. They left La Ciotat and went as a family to Paris, where he opened a baby equipment shop, which he had to close again after a short time. The couple subsequently separated. Lapointe changed his profession and became an antenna installer without stopping to write.

1956 marked the official beginning of his musical career: comedian Bourvil and Gilles Grangier chose one of his chansons ( Aragon et Castille ) for a musical transition in the film April Fool's Day . Etienne Lorin, accordionist Bourvils who became a friend of Lapointes, suggested this chanson to Bourvil. Neither the film nor the chanson were very successful. After all, Lapointe had been introduced to the Parisian scene.

During his time as a singer in the Parisian cabaret Le Cheval d'Or he made his first major appearances. There he met Anne Sylvestre , Raymond Devos , Ricet Barrier and Georges Brassens , with whom a mutual sympathy developed. Lapointe not only attracted attention because of his physical stature - his waist size, his athletic cut and his supposedly surly demeanor were strange there - but also because of his impromptu performances and his texts full of puns. It became the main attraction of the cabaret and attracted the attention of filmmaker François Truffaut . This picture of Lapointes described in this way is the model for the role of the singer in the film Tirez sur le pianiste ( Shoot the pianist ) with Charles Aznavour . The selected chansons are Framboise and Marcelle . Lapointe met Philippe Weil while filming. This hired him for another Parisian cabaret, the Les Trois Baudets . Between 1960 and 1961 he took two records there with the chansons Marcelle , Le poisson Fa , Bobo Léon and Aragon et Castille , which were also successful in the end.

Even with the following compositions, the success did not diminish: L'hélicon , Ta Katie t'a quitté , Saucisson de cheval , Comprend qui peut , Méli-Mélodie , Le tube de toilette , La maman des poissons ...

The difficult years

In the 1960s, Lapointe and Georges Brassens put tours after tours and recitals after recitals. But his moody nature led him to make mistakes. When he opened the concert café Le Cadran Bleu, his bankruptcy followed rapidly. Brassens helped him by taking on a significant number of Lapointes debt obligations and getting him smaller jobs for survival. The program director of the radio station Europe 1 persuaded Lapointe to sign a contract with the record company AZ. But in the 1960s the Yéyé ( Beat ) epoch began, and the brass music style on which all of Lapointe's songs are based was no longer in demand, either on the radio or in music stores. However, Lapointe resumed the cinematographic part of his career to star in the films of Claude Sautet : he was the brutal retarded in The Girl and the Inspector ( Max et les ferrailleurs ) and the pig wagon driver in The Things of Life ( Les Choses de la vie ). At the same time, Joe Dassin urged him to sign a new recording deal with Fonata / Philips, which ended up becoming his producer. Lapointe went on tour to promote his last record Comprend qui peut , conducted by Dassin. The cover of the album shows the painting of the singer created by the naive painter Maurice Ghiglion-Green . This portrait, which shows him in a striped sailor's sweater smelling of daisies, became an icon of Lapointes in later years.

As a hobby mathematician, Lapointe invented the bibi-binary notation system for the representation of hexadecimal numbers in 1968 .

Nevertheless, he pursued his career as a singer. He had his last appearance in the opening act of a concert by his fan and friend Pierre Perret at the Bobino in Paris.

The end

At the age of fifty, Boby Lapointe died of cancer in Pézenas with his family. He has only recorded about fifty chansons, which are still popular today; so in 2012 Jean-Marie Machado and André Minvielle reinterpreted his chansons on their album La fête à Boby .

In 2015 an asteroid was named after him: (27968) Bobylapointe .

Filmography

He has appeared in numerous films both in small roles and as a composer.

literature

References

  • two websites:
  • Some Books:
    • Boby Lapointe . Par Huguette Long Lapointe (sa sœur) et ses amis. (Encre, 1983)
    • Boby Lapointe . de Jacques Perciot (Denoël, 1997, Coll.Document et histoire )
    • Boby Lapointe . d'Alain Poulanges (Editions du May, 1994)
    • Le Boby Lapointe . Textes illustrés (Mango, 1998, coll. Il suffit de passer le pont 1998)
    • La maman des poissons . texte illustré par Fabrice Turrier (Didier Jeunesse, 2000, coll. Guinguette )
personal data
SURNAME Lapointe, Boby
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lapointe, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French singer
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Pézenas , Hérault department , France
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1972
Place of death Pézenas , Hérault department , France