Joe Dassin

Joe Dassin
Background information
Birth name Joseph Ira Dassin
Born (1938-11-05)5 November 1938
Brooklyn, New York, United States
Origin New York City
Died 20 August 1980(1980-08-20) (aged 41)
Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
Genres Chanson
French pop
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Years active 1964–1980
Labels Columbia (Canada, 1964–71)
CBS (elsewhere, and Canada since 1976)
RCA (Canada, 1972–76)

Joseph Ira Dassin (5 November 1938 – 20 August 1980) was an American born, French singer-songwriter.

Early life

Dassin was born in New York City to American film director Jules Dassin (1911–2008) and Béatrice Launer (1913–1994),[1] a New York-born violinist, who after graduating from a Hebrew High School in the Bronx studied with the British violinist Harold Berkely at the Juilliard School of Music.[2] His father was of Ukrainian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish extraction, his maternal grandfather was an Austrian-Jewish immigrant, who arrived in New York with his family at age 11.[3]

He began his childhood first in New York City and Los Angeles. However, after his father fell victim to the Hollywood blacklist in 1950, he and his family moved from place to place across Europe.

Dassin studied at the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, and graduated in Grenoble. Dassin moved back to the United States, where he attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan from 1957 to 1963, winning an undergraduate Hopwood Award for fiction in 1958 and earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1961 and a Master of Arts in 1963, both in Anthropology.[4]

Career

Moving to France, Dassin worked as a technician for his father and appeared as an actor in supporting roles, among others in a number of movies (three) directed by his father, including Topkapı (1964) in which he played the role of Josef. He met Valentin Teboul in Paris writing the famous Champs-Elysées Song in 1964.

On 26 December 1964, Dassin signed with CBS Records, making him the first French singer to be signed with an American record label.

By the early 1970s, Dassin's songs were at the top of the charts in France, and he became immensely popular there. He recorded songs in German, Spanish, Italian, and Greek, as well as French and English. Amongst his most popular songs are "Les Champs-Élysées" (Originally "Waterloo Road") (1969), "Salut les amoureux" (originally "City of New Orleans") (1973), "L'Été indien" (1975), and "Et si tu n'existais pas" (1975).

Cinema

Joe Dassin has appeared in the following movies:

Personal life

Joe Dassin with his parents, Jules Dassin and Béatrice Launer, in Paris in 1970.

Dassin married Maryse Massiéra in Paris on 18 January 1966. Their son Joshua was born two and a half months early on 12 September 1973, and died five days later. Overcome by grief, Joe became deeply depressed. Despite all their efforts, their marriage did not survive. In 1977, one year after their move to their newly built home in Feucherolles, just outside Paris, they divorced.

On 14 January 1978, Dassin married Christine Delvaux in Cotignac. Their first son, Jonathan, was born on 14 September 1978; and their second son, Julien, arrived on 22 March 1980. Christine died in December 1995.

Dassin died from a heart attack during a vacation to Tahiti on 20 August 1980.[5] His body is interred in the Beth Olam section of Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA.[6]

Discography

References

  1. ↑ Béatrice Dassin. Genealogy Bank. Retrieved on 26 July 2015.
  2. ↑ The Juilliard School of Music, "The Baton", p. 12
  3. ↑ Interview with Béatrice Launer. Joedassin.info. April 2004.
  4. ↑ University of Michigan, List of Hopwood Award Winners Archived 2 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine..
  5. ↑ "Joe Dassin, le roman de sa vie (France 3) – Le destin singulier d'une l'icône de la chanson française". Télé 7 Jours.
  6. ↑ Cimetières de France et d’ailleurs
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