Joe Dassin

American expatriate Joe Dassin was one of France's most popular singers during the late '60s and '70s, initially building his name with stylized adaptations of folk and country material from his birthplace. As his career blossomed, Dassin turned increasingly to traditional-style chansons penned by some of the genre's best writers, scoring an all-time classic with his 1975 smash "L'Eté Indien." Notorious for his perfectionism, Dassin could play the introverted romantic, but his persona also played off of American archetypes and imagery. His premature death of a heart attack in 1980 robbed French pop of one of its greatest modern-day practitioners. Joseph Ira Dassin was born November 7, 1938, in New York City. His father was future film director Jules Dassin, and his mother was Hungarian violinist Beatrice Launer. In 1940, the family moved to Los Angeles to further Jules' highly promising directing career; however, it was interrupted when he fell victim to the McCarthy-era blacklist. Moving to Europe in search of work, the family lived a migratory existence for a time, and finally settled in Paris in 1950. Joe's parents divorced in 1956; stung, he returned to the United States and enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he studied medicine and anthropology. In his free time, he worked as a radio DJ, and began singing folk songs and Georges Brassens compositions around the area with another French-speaking student. After returning to France, Dassin worked some low-level jobs in the film industry, including a few small parts in his father's movies; he also worked in radio and wrote freelance articles for Playboy and The New Yorker. In late 1964, at the urging of his future wife Maryse, Dassin made a demo recording for CBS France that turned some heads; soon, the...