Hugh! Aufray

New album from the French folk veteran

Paris 

19/10/2007 - 

At the ripe old age of 78, Hugues Aufray has just brought out a new album and is preparing a comeback on the live circuit. Surprisingly calm and serene after decades of ups and downs, the singer who gave France some of its most enduring folk classics, including the legendary Santiano, looks back on his career with  touching modesty.

Looking back over his long career, Hugues Aufray makes no attempt to deny anything - not even La Flotte américaine, the song he made right back at the start of his career, before he headed off to New York and brought the folk revolution back home to France. After La Flotte américaine a whole host of hits ensued including Santiano, Le Petit Ane gris, Stewball, L’Epervier, Dès que le printemps revient, Les Crayons de couleur, Le Port de Tacoma and a number of French versions of Bob Dylan songs. But Hugues is a man who shoulders responsibility for his entire discography, including La Flotte américaine - and those early singles covers where he appears with shirt and crisply knotted tie! "I believe there’s only one truth in life,"  he says, "the same way there’s only one summit to a mountain. And that’s been a guiding principle in my life, trying to get to that truth, that is one single truth even though there may be several ways of getting to it. The truth about my modest career is that I was never really prepared for this business. I never set out with the ambition of going on stage and becoming famous."

And yet that is precisely what Hugues Aufray did, going on to make so many recordings that the public appears to have lost count of the number of albums he made before his latest offering, Hugh! The opening track on the album, Ensemble on est moins seul (Together we’re less alone), written in collaboration with Frédéric Zeitoun, seems to sum up the Aufray story to date in the immortal line Je ne suis qu’un feu de camp/Juste un refrain dans le vent (I’m just a campfire/ Just a chorus on the wind!) After all, how many people gaily humming the chorus to Santiano or Adieu monsieur le Professeur imagine the song was actually written by one of their contemporaries? Hugues Aufray, it appears, has gone the way of all folk singers, disappearing behind the legend of his songs.

Ups and downs

For nearly all of the first decade of his career, Aufray remained an almost complete unknown, performing traditional Mexican and Spanish songs, old French folk ballads and Félix Leclerc numbers. "I ended up as a singer after someone else signed me up for the ‘N°1 de demain’ talent contest which I’d never have dreamt of getting involved in myself. At that stage of my life, I was already earning a living as a musician but I didn’t have any clear plans. Deep down, I still felt a bit of a failure because I’d originally wanted to become a painter. But then I ended up getting married when I was eighteen. I had a very strong sense of morality and traditional values. I believed a man should be the breadwinner and support his family. So there was no question of me becoming a painter! I knew some old folk songs and it was pretty easy for me to find work in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighbourhood (in Paris). Between 1950 and 1959, I made a decent living and I was able to support my family. But then I got mixed up in the whole record industry thing and I was under pressure to bring out albums. I had producers breathing down my neck telling me "You’ve got to sing this!" That’s how I ended up doing La Flotte américaine, when frankly the only interesting thing about the song was that it had been sung by Frank Sinatra."

In the early days of his career, Aufray also recorded a number of Serge Gainsbourg songs, before finally dropping his stiff shirt-and-tie look and inventing his own more laidback style with his faithful acoustic guitar slung round his neck. The early days were not all hardship and struggling, though. The young singer also mixed with celebrities and glamorous film stars, performing in a club in Rome where he sang for Ava Gardner (making The Barefoot Contessa) and Anna Magnani (during the shooting of Le Carrosse d’or). "The only photo I’ve got from those days is with the Mexican actor Pedro Armandariz," Aufray laments, "But as for John Huston and Humphrey Bogart…The problem with me is I never realise that I’m experiencing something exceptional at the time."

The path travelled

At the sage old age of 78, Aufray declares that today he is no more motivated by any kind of "calculated decisions" than he was yesterday. And he even goes so far as to claim that he is "lazy and fairly lightweight, the kind of guy who never really thinks about anything." We find that hard to believe given his track record to date, but Aufray insists, "No, really, I’ve gone through this business like a complete amateur!"

Aufray has always been very aware of what his popularity is based on, however, and it is no coincidence that his new album, Hugh!, taps into the luminous tone of his ‘60-‘70s heyday. Aufray admits that his arrival at Universal two years ago (with the album Hugues Aufray chante Félix Leclerc) marked something of a turning-point in his recent career. The singer spent twenty-five years producing his own albums on a shoestring budget, "cobbling together albums as best as I could under the circumstances." Now with the backing of a major label behind him, Hugh! finds Aufray visibly relaxing and indulging in a sort of dreamy meditation on his art and the smaller pleasures in life. Here and there, you almost catch the old devil smiling to himself as he sings, as if to remind himself - and us - that the path he has travelled has not always been an easy one.

Hugues Aufray Hugh ! (Mercury-Universal) 2007
19 - 21 October at the Olympia (Paris), 26 October in Clermont-Ferrand, 16 November in Lyon, 17 November in Aix-en-Provence, 18 November in Nice.

Bertrand  Dicale

Translation : Julie  Street