Everyone knew him, although not everyone liked. Everyone had hummed, seriously or jokingly, some of the songs of him, although not everyone was willing to praise them. It was Georgie Dann, who has died on Wednesday at the Hospital Gate of Hierro in Madrid at 81 years during a hip operation.
The French musician arrived in Spain trying to seduce her elegantly with a music rooted in the great tradition of the Chanson. He was a Parisian who saw how she resisted him in her halls and ended up taking her out to dance at nightclubs and verbenas to the call of the so-called "Summer Song".
Georgie Dann was smart, was pragmatic, helped, despite appearances, for a solid musical training, because Georges Mayer Dahan came from a family of musicians and had studied for nine years at the Paris Conservatory, apart from having the Magisterium career .
Excellent instrumentalist (accordion, clarinet, sax, guitar), was part of some French pop groups before trying luck as a soloist. And he did it in Spain, in 1964, at the Mediterranean festival, or the Mediterranean song, with his topic CE topic that you sais (all you know), a criticism of a young girl with her head to birds.
The festivals taught by then the musical fashion in Europe: Eurovision, San Remo, Sopot ... In Spain abounded, and that of Benidorm took the palm in terms of popularity and repercussions on the lists of successes and sales. The Mediterranean, celebrated in Barcelona, covered all the ambitions of the world to become the first festival of Spain. He did not get it, but left for posterity, in the voices of unforgettable interpreters, a handful of equally memorable songs. Among them ho capito that I love you, defended by Emilio Pericoli and Wilma Gooich (the rules of the contest demanded two interpreters).
That, nothing less, was the triumphant song in that 1964. Georgie Dann and Frida Boccara, one of the great stars of the French song, defended Tout CE than you sais. They were in sixth place, but they liked them a lot. The song was successful. Not so much, naturally, as a hole that you love you (I have understood that I love you), in, on the other hand, a year with you will be my baby (les surfs), the mamma (Charles Aznavour), If i Had a Hammer ( Trini López), Non Ho Letá Per Amari (Gigliola Cinquetti "), MA VIE (Alain Barrière), Sapore di Sale (Gino Paoli), Cuore (Rita Pavone), Solitary City (Mine), Pregheró (Adriano Celentano), Mysterious Love (Dynamic duo), etc.
But Georgie discovered Spain. In a way, he fell in love with her and decided to stay on her soil. But there was too much competition, between Spaniards and foreigners, in the musical field in which he wanted to unwrap. He then opted for a style that some would call "facilice", but for which it is necessary to have talent. A little glamorous talent, little appreciated by criticism, but undoubted. It is not easy to make a success with lower caliber ingredients. If so, many would aim with an advantage. Georgie took advantage of the formation of him to compose some songs dressed as a market and not boutique, but effective in a fiercely competitive world. That way he reached the informal title of, let's say, "King of the Summer Song".
The summer song is a discredit category. It is attributed characteristics of a cheap, merely catchy marketing, in the superficial sense of the term. A byproduct Player, Fesetero, only admissible as unpretentious fun in a framework of own intellectual stun, theoretical and topically, from the summer season. Cups, Legues ... Songs too, if you want, with your quality, your grace, your one, your truquito, but ... Fresquites, light. A frivolous and uninhibited parentheses between months of duties and concerns.
It does not stop being true, if we musically reduce the summer to those parameters. Okay, yes, Summer Songs have been the Yenka, Eva María, María Isabel, a ray of sun, the Ramona, the dancing of the birds, Liro shot, party, moves your CUCU, there is no beach, the yellow tractor , Aserejé, macarena, slowly ... but also "forgive me", "I am that", "María" (West Side Story ")," Delilah "," I love you "," Something of me "," the door of Alcalá "... Songs, on the other hand, not circumscribed to the months of heat, but extended to many more.
In any case, Georgie Dann knew a name of maximum value in a market defined by these characteristics, properties rather, commonly admitted as "summer", until you become identified with them and provide them with them. Actually, she became a symbol of a way of making music and interpreting her. The choreography was recognizable and appreciated as an essential part of the product: he, dressed in bright monkeys, with his typical whaling movements, flanked, surrounded by girls of immovable, irrenunciable physical characteristics, brand from the house. Girls showy, abundant, striking, with high boots and short skirts. A visual show.
And is that Georgie Dann was not, in purity, a great disc seller. But he maintained a very high rhythm of television performances and covered or outdoor premises of infinity of cities and towns. She had ups and downs, like all artist. But, over time, he maintained an agreement with himself and the followers of him who can only be cataloged from regularity within fidelity. Nature, let's say light, from the songs of him, turned it into a kind of Peter Pan. The years pass for everyone, but it has almost surprised us about him. We tended to attribute him, hibernated, a kind of joint and immutable youth-maturity, with his hair dyed but intact.
From 1964 until 2018, with its appearances, disappearances, ends and come, published thirty albums. And in the memory and soundtrack of the country, of a very concrete country, "Casatschock" stay, "El Bimbó", "Macumba", "Carnival, Carnival", "The African", "Black can not", " The chiringuito "," the barbecue "... from time to time some of those sound pieces reappear in an announcement, a period report, a sociological study, a film ... did not compose a lot for such a longeva artistic life. In the SGAE he has registered 303 songs. The letters of him were often a double elementary, vulgar, directed to an unplassily audience. But they worked.
Georgie married Emilia García (Emy), one of her "Go-Gós", with which she had three children. Two of them, Patricia and Paul, form the Calle Paris musical duo. He has died in Madrid in the course of a hip surgical intervention. Admirers or detractors remember it today as a character present in the lives of him, even in good times of them. And although some and others know perfectly what the black had, they still ask it. Today that phrase and others from Georgie would be politically excommunicated. But they were other times in another Spain in another world.
Date Of Update: 03 November 2021, 22:13
