Charles Aznavour – 10 of the best

1. Le Chemin de L’Éternité

On this early domestic success (whose title translates as The Road to Eternity), Aznavour marches through the pearly gates, remembering to take off his shoes beforehand for fear “they might leave footprints in the sky”.

2. La Bohème

In the wake of the canny album His Love Songs in English (1965), Aznavour’s English-speaking following snowballed. Among them was Bob Dylan, who saw him at New York’s Carnegie Hall and said: “He just blew my brains out.” Among the highlights of the show was La Bohème, a salaam to the Parisian neighbourhood Montmartre – and an Aznavour signature tune. At one of his final British performances, he enhanced it with the use of just one prop, a white rag, which was tossed into the crowd.

3. Non, Je N’Ai Rien Oublié (No, I Could Never Forget)

This encounter with an old love was a vehicle of much on-stage drama. It’s also a prime example of Aznavour’s technically limited vocal endowment conveying such exquisite enunciation and inflection that his fractional widening of vibrato during a sustained note could be as loaded as his most anguished wail.

4. The Old Fashioned Way

His first UK Top 40 entry in 1973, Les Plaisirs Démodés – its title in French – had been part of Aznavour’s stage presentation during a record-breaking run of 70 standing room-only engagements at the Olympia, Paris’s premier auditorium, in 1967. Its waltz-time remembrance of past romance would be reprised in up-tempo form for each recital’s play-out.

5. What Makes a Man

On the B-side of The Old Fashioned Way was this daring affront to middle-of-the-road pop sensibilities – what Aznavour believed to be the first chanson about a crossdressing gay man. The songwriter depicted him living alone with his widowed mother, a pathos that no doubt attracted Marc Almond when he covered the song in 1993.

6. She

In 1974, Aznavour scored a UK No 1 with She. Yet this achievement branded him for years as a merchant of schmaltz. Nonetheless, two new wave heroes covered it: the Specials’ Terry Hall and Elvis Costello, whose version plays over the closing credits of the Richard Curtis romcom Notting Hill. In 1981, it was remade as He by the variety show stalwart Kathy Kirby.

7. The Ham

When the likes of ELP, Tubular Bells, Weather Report and Steely Dan were emanating from college dorm rooms in the pre-punk 1970s, I was listening hard to all three volumes of Aznavour Sings Aznavour. Before the decade was out, teenage Europe would be treated to Clayson and the Argonauts’ version of The Ham (Le Cabotin), described by an NME reviewer as “a slice of Aznavourian breast-beating”.

8. Les Deux Guitares

Aznavour is propping up the bar during a tango derived from a folk source. At the start of the song he’s a crashing bore, spewing out dismal platitudes such as: “We’re all the same when we go.” The saloon band’s tango gathers tempo, his sozzled torpor dispels, and he becomes active and restless – “if the end should come today, let me take the gamble”. The tempo quickens, and he’s off his stool and dancing, a hostage to the beat until he drops, exhausted or dead.

9. Yesterday, When I Was Young

He was still performing in his 90s, but Aznavour wasn’t merely “marvellous for his age”, he was marvellous in absolute terms, even when addressing lost youth in what was first released (as Hier Encore) in 1964. It has been recorded by dozens of singers, including Dusty Springfield, Glen Campbell, Johnny Mathis and Elton John (on Aznavour’s Duos album in 2008). But the most famous version, in the US at least, is probably by Roy Clark. His 1969 version reached the country Top 10 there and was Clark’s only mainstream pop hit.

10. Emmenez-Moi (Take Me Along)

Bordering roughly the same area as Otis Redding’s (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay, Emmenez-Moi was an appropriate farewell before Aznavour vanished into the wings for ever after his final concert, on 17 September in Tokyo. The ear-stinging decibels of foot-stomping ovation only fizzled out a full 10 minutes after Emmenez-Moi, by which time, the great chansonnier’s limo was probably halfway back to the hotel. Bravo, Charles – et adieu!