Mouloudji - One day you will see

Original Title: "Un jour, tu verras"
Music: George Van Parys
Year: 1954

One day, you'll see, we'll meet
Somewhere, anywhere, guided by chance
We'll look at each other and smile at one another
And, hand in hand, will walk the streets
Time passes so fast, the evening will hide our hearts well
Those two thieves who keep their happiness
Then we'll reach a great square
Where the cobbles would be sweet to our grey souls
There would be a ball there, very poor, very common
Under a sky full of fog and melancholy
A blind man would play some barrel organ
That tune would be the most beautiful, the nicest to us

Then I would invite you, I'd take you by the waist
We'd dance quietly far from the town people
We'd dance love, eyes at the bottom of the eyes
Toward an end of the world, toward a deep night

One day, you'll see, we'll meet
Somewhere, anywhere, guided by chance
We'll look at each other and smile at one another
And, hand in hand, will walk the streets

Live version:

Georges Brassens - The bad seed

Original Title: "La mauvaise herbe"
Year: 1954

When day of glory came
As everyone had kicked the bucket
I only knew the dishonor
Of not having died on the field of honor

I am the bad seed, good people, good people
I am not the one who is being ruminated
And I am not the one who is bound into sheaves
Death reaped others, good people, good people
And spared me, it's immoral and it's like that

And I wonder why Good Lord
It bothers you that I live a little
And I wonder why Good Lord
It bothers you that I live a little

The girl, who belongs to everyone, has good heart
She gives me haphazardly
the little pieces of her skin, well hidden,
that others haven't touched

I am the bad seed, good people, good people
I am not the one who is being ruminated
And I am not the one who is bound into sheaves
She sells herself to others, good people, good people
She gives herself to me, it's immoral and it's like that

And I wonder why Good Lord
It bothers you that I am being loved a little
And I wonder why Good Lord
It bothers you that I am being loved a little

Men are made, we are being told,
To live in bands like sheeps
Me, I live alone, and it won't be tomorrow
That I'll follow the straight path

I am the bad seed, good people, good people
I am not the one who is being ruminated
And I am not the one who is bound into sheaves
I am the bad seed, good people, good people
I grow freely in the places where wrong people go

And I wonder why Good Lord
It bothers you that I live a little
And I wonder why Good Lord
It bothers you that I live a little

Jacques Brel - Big Jack (It's too easy)

Original Title: "Grand Jacques (C'est trop facile)"
Year: 1954

It's too easy to enter churches
To pour out all our filth
In front of the parish priest who in the grey light
Closes the eyes so to better forgive us

Would you keep quiet Big Jack
What do you know of the Good Lord
A canticle an image
You don't know anything more of it

It's too easy when the wars are over
To go shout that it was the last one
Bourgeois friends how I envy you
So you don't see your own cemeteries

Would you keep quiet Big Jack
And let them shout so
Let them cry for joy
You who wasn't even a soldier

It's too easy when a love is dying
That it breaks in two because it has been bent too much
To go cry like men cry
As if love lasted forever

Would you keep quiet Big Jack
What do you know of love
Some blues eyes some crazy hair
You know nothing of it

And thus tell yourself Big Jack
And thus tell yourself Big Jack
Tell it often to yourself
It's too easy
It's too easy
To pretend

Marcel Mouloudji - Like a small poppy

Mouloudji Comme un p'tit coquelicot,
Original Title: "Comme un p'tit coquelicot"
Text: Raymond Asso

Year: 1954

The forget-me-not and then the rose,
Those are flowers which mean something
But to like poppies
And not like anything else...One must be an idiot!

Maybe you are right! The only thing is,
when I will have told you, you will understand!
The first time I saw her,
She was sleeping, half naked
In the light of the summer
In the middle of a wheat field
And under the white blouse
Where her heart was beating
The sun, gently,
was making a flower live
Like a small poppy, my soul! Like a small poppy.

It's strange how your eyes are shining
While you remember the pretty girl!
They shine so strongly that it's a bit too much
To explain...the poppies!

Maybe you are right! The only thing is
When I took her in my arms
She gave me her beautiful smile
And then afterward, without telling each other anything
In the light of summer
We loved each other! We loved each other!
And I have pressed so much
My lips over her heart
That right where I kissed her
There was like a flower
Like a little poppy, my soul!
Like a little poppy.

It's nothing else but an affair
Your little story, and I swear to you
That it does not deserve a single sob
Nor that passion...for the poppies!

Wait for the end! And you will understand:
Another one was in love with her who she did not love!
And the next day, when I saw her again
She was sleeping, half naked,
In the light of the summer
In the middle of the wheat field
But, on the white blouse,
Right where her heart is
There were three drops of blood
Which were making like a flower
Like a little poppy, my soul!
A very small poppy

Another version:

Jacques Brel - On the square

Original Title: "Sur la place"
Year: 1954

On the square, made warm by the sun
A girl started to dance
She is turning always the same way, alike
to the dancers of antiquities*
On the city, it's too warm
Men and women are dozing
And look through the pane
That girl who is dancing at noon

In this way, some days appears
A flame in our eyes
At the church I was going to
It was called the good Lord
The lover calls it love
The beggar: charity
The sun calls it the day
And the honest man: kindness

On the square vibrating with hot air
Where not even a dog makes its appearance
Swaying like reed
The girl leaps, comes and go
Nor guitar nor tambourin
To accompany her dance
She strikes in her hand
To give herself the rhythm

In this way, some days appears
A flame in our eyes
At the church I was going to
It was called the good Lord
The lover calls it love
The beggar: charity
The sun calls it the day
And the honest man: kindness

On the square where everything is quiet
A girl started to sing
And her song hangs over the town
Hymn of love and kindness
But over the town, it's too warm
And in order to not hear the song
Men close the panes
Like a door between alive and dead ones

In this way, some days appears
A flame in our heart
But we never want
to let its light glimmer
We turn a deaf ear
And we veil our eyes
We do not like the wakening
Of our heart already old

On the square a dog is still howling
Because the girl left
And, like the dog howling death,
Cries for the men
Their destiny

*I am pretty sure J. Brel refers to those little dancers on antique music boxes who turn and turn. Hence the translation about antiquities instead of ancient dancers.
Another version:

Jacques Brel - Sur la place

Sung by Barbara in 1973:

Léo Ferré - The spanish ship

Original Title: "Le bateau espagnol"
Year: 1954

I was a big ship sailing down the Garonne
Stuffed with smuggled goods and cramed with Spaniards
People who were looking were saluting the Madonna
That I had attached on the stern by the neck

One day I will go away very far in America
To give tons of gold to the Negros of cotton
I would be the thinking and poetic boat
And Bordeaux will collapse under my large pontoons

How long is the way to America
How long is the way to love
Happiness always come after sorrow
Don't worry my friend, I will be back
As the travels shape the youth
Don't worry my friend, I will grow old

Satisfy with ancient gold, bending under the tropics
One day I come back sails up front
Carrying new wheat with my cudgle hits
Alone better than a sailer I'd rape the wind
Harnesssed with Spaniards, sailing up the Garonne
I will come back home, bursting with glimmers
People would draw aside, saluting the Madonna
On the stern by the neck and of another color

How sweet is the way to Spain
How sweet is the way back
Happiness always come after sorrow
Don't worry my friend, I will come back
As the travels shape the youth
I will tell you my friend: your turn
Your turn.

Philippe Léotard's version (1994):

Jacques Douai's version (1955):

Jacques Bertin's version (1989):

Mouloudji - Renoir - Hillock's lament

Original Title: "Complainte de la Butte"
Text: Jean Renoir
Music: Georges Van Parys
Song from the movie "French Cancan"
Year: 1954

Up St Vincent street, a poet and a stranger girl
Loved each others for a moment
But he never saw her again
This song he composed hoping that his stranger girl,
One morning of spring, will hear it
Somewhere at the corner of a street.

The moon, too livid, places a diadem on your red hair
The moon, too red, spills glory on your petticoat full of holes
The moon, too pale, carresses the opal of your unimpressed eyes
Princess of the street
Be welcome in my wounded heart

The stairs up to the hillock are hard on the poors
The wings of the mills protect the lovers

Little beggar, I feel your little hand
Which is looking for my hand
I feel your chest and your slender waist,
I forget my sorrow
I smell on your lips a scent of fever of malnourished child
And under your caress, I feel an ecstasy that annihilates me.

The stairs up to the hillock are hard on the poors
The wings of the mills protect the lovers

And here comes the rain, the moon dashes off
The princess as well
Under the moonless sky, I cry in the dark
My vanished dream

Cora Vaucaire's version: