Charles Aznavour, enduring French singer of global fame, dies at 94
Source: New York Times
Charles Aznavour, one of France’s most celebrated singers of popular songs as well as a composer, film star and lifelong champion of the Armenian people, has died at his home in Mouriès, in southwestern France. He was 94.
His accomplishments were prodigious. He wrote, by his own estimate, more than 1,000 songs, for himself and for others, and sang them in French, Armenian, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Yiddish. By some estimates, he sold close to 200 million records and appeared in more than 60 films.
At an age when most performers have long retired from the footlights and the brutal, peripatetic life of an international star, Mr. Aznavour continued to range the world, singing his songs of love found and love lost to capacity audiences who knew most of his repertoire by heart.
“We live long, we Armenians,” he said. “I’m going to reach 100, and I’ll be working until I’m 90.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/obituaries/charles-aznavour-dead.html
Charles Aznavour, 1924-2018.
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The Guardian, "Charles Aznavour, the 'Frank Sinatra of France', dies aged 94, Singer best known for ballad She sold 100m records and had parallel acting career," The Guardian, Oct. 1, 2018.
Aznavour, who was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris to Armenian parents, sold more than 100m records in 80 countries and had about 1,400 songs to his name, including 1,300 he wrote himself. He was sometimes described as the French Sinatra because of his stirring, melancholic style. He left school aged nine to become a child actor and went on to have a successful parallel acting career, most notably appearing in François Truffaut’s new-wave classic Tirez Sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player), Claude Chabrol’s Les Fantômes du Chapelier (The Hatter’s Ghost), and the 1979 Oscar-winning film adaptation of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum.
His singing career was forged in occupied Paris during the second world war, performing in cabarets as his parents secretly worked with the resistance, hiding Jews, communists and others in their apartment. “French is my working language but my family language is always Armenian,” he said in 2017. Aznavour opened for Édith Piaf at the Moulin Rouge and the popular singer was an early adviser – and flatmate. “I brought her my youth, my madness; she loved my whole jazzy side,”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/01/charles-aznavour-french-singer-dies-aged-94
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(Wiki) During the German occupation of France during World War II, Aznavour and his family hid Jews and “a number of people who were persecuted by the Nazis, while Charles and his sister Aida were involved in rescue activities,” according to a statement issued in 2017 by the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. In that year he and Aida received the Raoul Wallenberg Award for their wartime activities. "The Aznavours were closely linked to the Missak Manouchian Resistance Group and in this context they have offered shelter to Armenians, Jews & others at their own Paris flat, risking their own lives."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Aznavour
Mr. Aznavour as a pianist with a mysterious past in “Shoot the Piano Player” (1960), his best-known film. The director, François Truffaut, said he wrote the role specifically for Mr. Aznavour.
