It’s not particularly my beloved Paris, as Bogart says to Conrad Veidt in “Casablanca.” But we were talking about favorite cities last Friday evening, and one thing led to another—I’ve been listening to various performances of this ever since. It’s associated most closely with Josephene Baker, who either wrote it or had it written for her. DeeDee Bridgewater named an album after it. But this easygoing Madeleine Peyroux version is probably best known at the moment.
Not surprisingly, it’s most affecting in French. English translations lose a certain, uh, je ne sais quoi. It would be a compliment to call my French truly lousy, but this is my version, which attempts to get the meaning, not necessarily the individual words or idioms, right. I’m not all that happy with the big black trees or “my ravished heart,” but I don’t do this for a living. And nobody in his right mind (I know, I know, it’s inevitable) would try to sing this song in English.
(I have seen a few performances—in French, but by Americans—that move the song from Paris music hall toward western swing: clippity clop, clippity clop, twang, twang. There are a few on YouTube. Weirdly wonderful. This is, after all, clearly a song written from the point of view of an American yearning to come to France.)
