My Mom and Claude François

This is a corrected version of an earlier posting.

I wish my step mom had been here last night to watch the two-hour variety show staring the French singer Claude François (CF). Although I call her my step mom, she is much more my mom. In the forty years she has been in my life, we have never had a cross word. This woman doesn’t even know the ugly step mother manual exists. I doubt is she even read about those wicked women in Snow White or Cinderella.

The program was over 30 years olf. François was electrocuted in his bath in 1978. http://www.geocities.com/claudefrancoisforever He pioneered pre-Brittany type acts and wrote the song MY WAY (no, it wasn’t Paul Anka who changed the lyrics. To see different translations of the song that has provided François’ sons with money for life http://www.nakedtranslations.com/fr/2004/07/000194.php )

French TV couldn’t function without dead singers. They regularly celebrate the anniversaries of their deaths with programs which I call the 25 ans déjà (25 years already) syndrome, although it could be another time period. Their music is replayes, people talk about the deceased, etc. But then this a country that announces deaths without saying the word death. A judge might bang his last gavel, a lion tamer tame his last cat. Arthur Miller’s death was announced as Arthur Miller joins Marilyn in Paradise.

So the replay of the old show was no surprise. Why did I wish my mom was with me? When she visited me in Geneva years back, I showed her a tape of one of the X Ans Déjà programs about CF. She barely noticed his dancers, the Claudettes, with their exposed breasts. She was too busy tapping her feet.

She loved his music so much I gave her a CF CD, solving the problem of what to buy a woman who has what she needs and wants. When I was in Paris I took a photo of the place where CF had lived and worked and sent it to her.

I’ve always loved the book stalls flanking the Seine. Once I could read French, I loved to browse and buy. This springtime walk had had so much rain that the Seine was almost overflowing. Everything smelled fresh. A boat with tourists drifted towards Notre Dame. One stall sold old issues of magazines and I spied the March 1978 issue of Paris March http://www.parismatch.com/ which is a high class People. Lots about celebrities, but they also have articles about writers, painters and world events. CF was on the cover and inside were photos of his life and death. I grabbed it and mailed it to her. At least I knew she wouldn’t have two.

Watching the program brought back good memories of a good woman much more than memories of CF.