Boby Lapointe would have celebrated his 100th birthday on April 16, 2022. The “Douanier Rousseau” of French song did unusual jobs, hid from the Nazis, had a serious car accident, was in debt (and helped by Georges Brassens), and performed on stage for the last time with his friend Pierre Perret.
Boby Lapointe would have celebrated his 100th birthday April 16, 2022. Crack of puns and other puns, the singer, death of a pancreatic cancer in 1972, mastered marvelously the richness of the French language, but also of mathematics (to the point of developing his own numbering system). If his genius was misunderstood during his lifetime, his musical heritage continues to exist through the generations. Secrets of this wonder of words, numbers and sounds.
Boby Lapointe was born on April 16, 1922 in Pézénas, in the Hérault.
After his baccalaureate, this enthusiast of aviation and mathematics tries the entrance examination for the École centrale and Supaérotwo great schools.
The physicist and engineer Louis Leprince-Ringuet, amazed by the treaty of math that he shows him, advises him to start looking.
Boby Lapointe has an ingenious mind. He also perfected a mode of graphic and phonetic representation of binary or hexadecimal numbers, called the bibi-binary system. Le brevet of this count was filed on March 28, 1968 with the Ministry of Industry. The following year, it appears in the Official Bulletin of Industrial Property. Just that!
But in 1943, when he was 20 years old, he had to interrupt his studies and was requisitioned by the STO (Compulsory Labor Service) of Nazi Germany.
Sent to Linz, Austria, he quickly escapesbut lives for seven months as a nomad and tries to survive under aliases so as not to be detected. Finally, he managed to return in May 1944, to Occitania, his native region.
He becomes scaphandrier at the port of La Ciotat, in the Bouches-du-Rhône. A position that allows him to hide from the Germans.
It was also at this time that he begins to write his textsboth wacky and brilliant.
But geniuses are often misunderstood, and if Boby Lapointe tries to know his texts to the greatest number, he wades first. As he stands at a song gala in Juan-les-Pinshe meets the Jacques brothers, famous quartet which combines singing and mime, and invites them to interpret its texts. But they refuse, fearing that the complexity of songs does not put off the general public.
In 1946, Boby Lapointe wife Colette Maclaud. Together they have two children, Ticha and Jackybut divorce only a few years later.
The word lover opens a hosiery trade, called Poil de Carotte, in Paris, but business did not take off. It then becomes TV antenna installer for a short time, then delivery man, appearing in films, or even a bartender.
In 1954, luck finally smiled on him. While Boby Lapointe has become friends with Etienne Lorin, accordionist from Bourvil, the musician offers the actor to include one of Boby Lapointe’s songs in the film April Foolby Gilles Grangier. Bourvil then agrees to sing the title Aragon and Castile.
It’s in the Parisian cabaret The Golden Horse that Boby Lapointe continues on his journey. He performs there regularly, meets several big names in French song, including Georges Brassenswith whom he becomes friends.
He also crosses paths with Francois Truffautwho offers him to interpret the bar singer in his son Shoot The Pianistin 1960. He performs his pieces there Raspberry et Marcelle, but the director decides to incorporate subtitles into this sequence so that the public will not be confused by the many puns of the song. Since then, Boby Lapointe is nicknamed in the press the “subtitled singer“.
In 1961 he plays for the first time at the Olympia by opening the show of Johnny Hallyday.
Then, Boby Lapointe opens his café concert, The Blue Dial. At the entrance, he installs a clock and the motto of the establishment becomes: “At Lapointe, we tip and we tip“. But quickly, he goes bankrupt. Fortunately, his friend Georges Brassens helps him by repaying part of his debts and helping him find odd jobs.
In 1965, Boby Lapointe was victim of a car accident which immobilizes him for a few months and from which he keeps the after-effects until the end of his days.
If he manages to live from his music during the last years of his life, Boby Lapointe is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At the end of 1971, when he was already in bad shape, he dreams of performing on stage before his death. It was Pierre Perret, his faithful friend, who granted him this wish. “He was in such a state… Rebecca called her doctor and asked Boby if he could sing for a month with me at Bobino. He replied that it was a wonderful giftbecause soon he would be gone“, he confided to France Sunday.
“It was heart wrenching to see him like this. But he wanted to take it with humor and modesty“, he added. He sings in public for the last time, during a concert by Pierre Perret at the Salle Bobino, in Paris, in the first part of the show.
Boby Lapointe dies at 50, June 29, 1972 in Pézenas, and is buried in his hometown. If he had had a relative success during his lifetime, his friend Pierre Perret regrets that the talent of the interpreter of Your Katie left you was not further understood. “I wish we had discovered it at the time, it would have done him good. Now we statue it, but we don’t care“, he lamented in France Sunday.