Singer and songwriter;
Born: May 3, 1934; Died: May 23, 2013.
Georges Moustaki, who has died aged 79, was a Greek-born singer-songwriter beloved in France for his collaborations with Edith Piaf and his songs celebrating liberty. He wrote the lyrics for Milord, which was a hit for Piaf all over the world, including the UK.
He was born Giuseppe Mustacchi in Alexandria, Egypt, where his parents, who were immigrant Jews, ran a bookshop. It was a cultured, multilingual upbringing – his parents spoke 11 languages between them and the young Moustaki spoke French, Italian and Arabic. After a holiday in Paris when he was 17 he decided to move there in 1951 and took a job as a travelling salesman for a publisher.
However, after a chance meeting with the French singer-songwriter Georges Brassen, he decided music was the career for him – taking the name of Georges as a tribute – and began playing guitar and singing in nightclubs.
His music was inspired by many of the French greats such as Henri Salvador, Charles Trenet and Piaf. Over the years he would meet and work with many of them, although the first meeting with Piaf did not go well.
"I picked up a guitar and I was lamentable," Moustaki remembered. "But something must have touched her. She asked me to go and see her perform that same evening and to show her the songs I had just massacred."
Soon he was writing for Piaf and had become her lover too. Their biggest hit together was Milord, a song about a working-class French girl who falls in love with a British aristocrat.
Moustaki said of it: "The song was from me to [Edith] - every time she sang that song, I knew she was singing it to me."
It reached number 24 in the British charts in 1960 and, with Jacques Brel, established Moustaki as part of the French counter to the British dominance of pop music in the 1960s.
In time, Moustaki's affair with Piaf ended and he began performing himself, most famously Le Meteque and Ma Liberte, which became an anthem of the 1960s.
In all, he wrote about 300 songs, many of them performed by some of the biggest stars in France and beyond (Cher is among the artists who have covered Milord). He also wrote music for films.
Reflecting on his life and death last December, Moustaki said he wanted to be buried in Alexandria, where he was born. "There is a cemetery that is the cemetery of free thinkers," he said, "and it is there that I want to rest for eternity."
He is survived by his daughter Pia, who is also a singer.
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