Joe Dassin

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Joseph Ira Dassin (November 5, 1938 – August 20, 1980) was a French-speaking American expatriate musician. He later acquired dual citizenship (French and American).

Dassin was born in New York City to Jewish American film noir director Jules Dassin and Béatrice Launer, a virtuose Hungarian violinist. He began his childhood first in New York and Los Angeles, California. However, after his father became a victim of the anti-communist policies of Senator Joseph McCarthy, he and his family moved from place to place across Europe.

After studying at the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, Dassin moved back to the United States to go to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After college, he moved back to France where, while working at a radio station, a record label convinced him to begin to record his songs.

By the early 1970s, Dassin's songs were on the top of the charts in France and he had become very well known. He was also a talented polyglot, recording songs in German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Greek, as well as French and English.

He died of a heart attack during a vacation to Tahiti on August 20, 1980. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

[edit] Songs

• "Les Champs-Élysées" - English translation
• "Bip Bip"
• "Il était une fois nous deux"
• "Et si tu n'existais pas"*
• "Les Dalton"
• "L'été indien"
• "Siffler sur la colline"
• "À toi"
• "Le jardin du Luxembourg"
• "Si tu t'appelles Mélancolie"
• "L'équipe à Jojo"
• "La ligne de ma vie"
• "À chacun sa chanson"
• "Ça va pas changer le monde"
• "Fais la bise à ta maman"
• "La dernière page"
• "Sylvie"
• "Guantanamera"
• "L'Amérique"
• "Le chemin de papa"
• "Salut les amoureux"
• "Il faut naître à Monaco"

[edit] External links

• A biography in French
• Another French entry
• Joe Dassin at the Internet Movie Database
• Unofficial site: Discography, singles, compilations, covers and lyrics