In the Fifties, French popular music was Piaf, Aznavour and Charles Trenet, and songs in the French chanson tradition that told stories, with plots usually wrapped around amour, written for grownups.

When rock and roll caught on, French teenagers, like kids everywhere, wanted a style of music that was their own. A few rock groups tried original material. But French is the language of poetry and novels, elegant and flowing. Rock songs are to the point, with punchy lyrics; short on sublety and loaded with action, better suited to English. English thus became the language of rock and roll, and its first hits were American.

To fill the demand for rock music, and to counter the flood of import albums destined for French record shops, the French record biz fell back on translated versions of songs from the American hit parade. French words were stuffed into melodies written for English, with varying results.

Of the artists who defined ye-ye, or American rock French style, Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan became the king and queen of the cover song.

Johnny Hallyday

He combined Elvis’ stage presence with James Dean’s aura of smoldering rebellion, and was France’s first rock-era pop star. He’s sold more records than any singer whose native language is French, but he’s virtually unknown in North America.

When "Hound Dog" changed everything, Johnny Hallyday was thirteen and wanted to be a movie star. He drifted between cinema and pop until a one-off record made in 1961 became moderately successful, and a performance at Paris’ Palais des Sports, as part of a Woodstock-like offering of new talent, introduced French teenagers to the collective concert mayhem previously seen only at Elvis shows.

At first he took on the easy ones: C’est fini Miss Molly. Itsi bitsi petit bikini. Dadou ron ron (the "Louie Louie" of France, a song everyone could whip out). When pop music matured in the mid-Sixties, he grew with it and recorded covers that are as compelling as their originals: Le penitencier ("House Of The Rising Sun," in English "the prisoner"), Si j’etais un charpentier ("If I Were A Carpenter"), and John Phillips’ "San Francisco" complete with "hippies avec fleurs dans ses cheveaux."

Like Elvis, Johnny Hallyday played Vegas, to rooms filled with busloads of French vacationers and tourists from Illinois who wandered in to see what was happening. Like Elvis, he appeared in movies. Unlike Elvis, he proved himself an actor who could also sing, as opposed to a singer who thought he’d try acting. Americans who seek out foreign movies were introduced to France’s king of pop minus his guitar in the critically-acclaimed 2003 film Man On The Train.

Sylvie Vartan

In newsreel footage of the Beatles’ January 1964 appearances at the Paris Olympia, Sylvie Vartan’s name appears on the venue’s marquee.

Sylvie Vartan was already a star in France, on the strength of Panne d’essence ("Out Of Gas"), written by American country and western singer John D. Loudermilk. Other covers followed: Quand le film est triste ("Sad Movies," another Loudermilk song); Twiste et chante (a pre-Beatles hit for the Isley Brothers); Baby c’est vous ("Baby It’s You"), the ever-present Dadou ron ron, and Le locomotion (yes, THAT "Locomotion").

She and Johnny Hallyday married in April 1965 (they were to split twelve years later). French music was developing its own identity, and covers now shared the charts with songs by French writers. Of those, Mme. Vartan’s greatest success was Comme un garçon, recorded in the then-fave music hall style of Peter and Gordon’s "Lady Godiva," covered itself in 2002 by the retro-pop duo Stereo Total.

But record buyers wanted covers, and that’s what they got. Homme en noir ("Pretty Woman"). L’amour est bleu ("Love Is Blue"). Je te cherche ("Rocket Man"). On a 1977 album, Warren Zevon’s "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" became Pauvre Sylvie. Later, Bob Seger got the treatment twice: Pour l’amour tu me garderas, "You’ll Accomp’ny Me" (three semesters of college French tell me the title translates as "for love, you’ll keep me") and Le bon temps du rock and roll ("Old Time Rock And Roll" never sounded like this before!)

Sylvie Vartan also played Las Vegas, sometimes performing a few hotels down the Strip from her ex. She’s still recording, and filling concert halls in France, throwing in a cover now and then to keep things interesting. Most are Broadway show tunes and pop standards. Fans of Eighties flashbacks, however, might want to search out the album with "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This" (Déprime) on it.

Claude François

"Clo-Clo," as he’s still known to his fans, was one of the French cover’s more prolific practitioners. His discography includes some unlikely selections, and his accidental death in 1978 was even more off the page.

What song recorded in 1929 in Memphis by Cannon’s Jug Stompers became a top-40 hit during the Sixties folk revival, and by doing so was fair game for the French coverers? If you said "Walk Right In" by the Rooftop Singers, you know more about this music that I do and could teach me a few things. Marche tout droit, "walk all right," is an account of time spent engaged in a universal guy pastime: hanging out, watching women pass by, and wishing certain ones would return.

Clo-Clo was an over-the-top guy who sported sequined stage clothes and toured with a revue that included backup singers named "The Clo-dettes," who took on anything American, from country to Motown. Six jours sur la route ("Six Days On The Road"). Serre-moi, grippe-moi ("Bend Me, Shape Me"). Le monde absurde ("Eve Of Destruction"). He cut C’est la même chanson, "The Same Old Song," along with a handful of Motown tunes, at the legendary Hitsville USA studio in Detroit. And no French pop icon’s discography can be complete without Dadou ron ron.

Ironically, it was the cover process in reverse that gave him a North American legacy. His Comme d’habitude got English lyrics from Paul Anka and became "My Way."

On March 11, 1978, Claude François was electrocuted at his Paris apartment, after a shower, when he tried to change a burned-out light bulb while forgetting he was still standing in water. Nearby, on the boulevard Exelmans, the city of Paris has named a street corner Place Claude François. La Poste, which finds nothing wrong with having pop stars on stamps, so honored Clo-Clo and five others in 2001.

Rock and roll in French Canada

In Quebec there existed a parallel North American teenage universe in which everything was in French. French-language top 40 radio stations, formatted to sound like their English counterparts, played Francophone hits alongside covers of whatever was hot in the States and England. Bands modeled on the Dave Clark Five, and girl singers wearing the latest

Supremes-approved fashions, stars in Quebec but unknown elsewhere, appeared on CBC French TV’s La jeunesse d’aujourd-hui ("The Youth Of Today"), a Saturday night mix of Bandstand, Shindig, and Top Of The Pops.

From among them emerged an unlikely, somewhat mismatched, pairing: a Quebeçois Freddie Cannon with Rick Nelson’s youthful charisma, and a girl from Mississippi who moved to Montreal, who later became a blues singer, Tony Roman and Nanette Workman.

Tony and Nanette

If three duets are an indicator, Tony Roman and Nanette Workman were promoted as the French-Canadian Sonny and Cher. Their discography includes Petites choses ("Little Things"), Et maintenant ("What Now My Love") and Petite homme ("Little Man").

Tony Roman had already charted in Quebec with Do wha diddy and Hanky Panky (some pop lyrics being so universal that they don’t need translating). In the States, he met Nanette and offered to get her a record deal. He started Canusa Records to give other Francophone bands a home, and also because every label he tried had found Nanette’s Mississippi-accented French unacceptable.

In 1975, Nanette Workman covered Labelle’s "Lady Marmalade" in French, but later returned to English and became a blues-rock singer in the style of Janis Joplin. She’s still on the scene, playing club dates in Montreal, and summer blues festivals throughout North America.

Selected Quebec songs

Many artists had two or three hits. A random sampling:

Splish splash by César et les Romains: Correctly pronoundced in French "Spleeesh Splash," it’s remarkably faithful to the Bobby Darin original. There’s a party happening out on the living room carpet ("le tapis"), with records playing and jeunes filles in attendance, while the singer checks out the action from behind the cracked door of la salle de bain.

Cowgirl doreé by Reneé Martel: From Sherbrooke, Quebec. Both parents were professional singers. She favored covers of country and country-pop songs. I looked it up: "dore," adjective; " feminine "doreé." Gilded, golden. Golden cowgirl. Rhinestone cowboy? Yup. (My French professors smile and nod approvingly.)

Le beau petit sous-marin jaune by Les Baronets: "Sous-marin," submarine. "Jaune," yellow. A tight squeeze into the Lennon-McCartney melody, but it worked somehow.

The ubiquitous Petula Clark

She’s not French, but deserves honorable mention after recording dozens of English hit songs in French, and in German and Italian. It was an album of mostly covers, "Les Grandes Successes de Petula Clark," that welcomed me to this little traveled, surprise-filled corner of popular music.

"I Will Follow Him" by Peggy March. We’ve all heard it, and probably sang along more times that we’d admit. Maybe one oldie fan in a thousand knows that it was originally a French song. I didn’t until I played track one, side one, Chariot, of "Les Grandes Successes," and compared the writer credits with those on Peggy March’s album. The cover search has taught me that you never know what you’re going to find, or what information will pop up where it’s least expected.

Turn it up and sing along, say the oldies stations. Okay, I will. Dans le temps ("Downtown."). Entre nous, elle est fou ("She’s A Fool," a true copy right down to the shack-a-doo background vocals). C’est ma chanson ("This Is My Song."). Hello Dolly (Yes). Fortunately, writers can work alone. French covers aren’t the sort of thing on which everyone in the office can agree.

The exotic, mysterious Dalida

Born Yolanda Christina Guglietti in 1933, in Cairo of Italian parents, she was Miss Egypt of 1954. She moved to Paris to become a movie actress, taking her new stage name from Hedy Lamarr’s character in the film "Samson and Delilah." She became an acceptable cabaret singer. A few club dates led to the offer of a record deal. Her second single, "Bambino," ruled the French music charts in 1956, and a chanteuse was born. That meant covers, and among her early successes was La jour où la pluie viendra, an American hit for Jane Morgan as "The Day The Rain Came Down."

Dalida recorded English songs in French, German songs in Italian and Spanish, and added Arabic to her arsenal of languages. Her records have sold over 80 million copies worldwide, earning 55 gold records over a career that spanned classic oldies, folk, disco, new wave, and the beginnings of techno. In the French covers era, she contributed Gardez-moi le dernier danse ("Save The Last Dance For Me"), Où sont devenues les fleurs

("Where Have All The Flowers Gone"), Bang Bang (the 1966 Cher hit) and Le petit Gonzalez (knowing the French fascination with certain styles of American pop, there had to be a version of "Speedy Gonzalez" out there somewhere).

Her album covers picture her as a dark-haired Italian beauty or a blonde française, depending on the decade. Over the years, she adapted the personas of a bright-eyed ingenue, a temptress, a saint, and a disco queen. Dalida’s personal life was one of divorces, affairs, breakups, and the occasional suicide attempt. On May 3, 1987, she succeeded. Her note read: "Life has become unbearable. Please forgive me."

Her massive gray granite tombstone and life-sized statue are tourist attractions in Paris’ Cimitiére Montmartre. Nearby, the junction of two streets in her adopted home neighborhood has been designated by the city as Place Dalida. She’s on a French stamp in the same 2001 pop stars set as Claude François.

Now, travel with Monsieur Tom way down another back road to a secluded corner of this already little-known sub-genre of pop, to meet Les Surfs.

La chanson de shoop-shoop

Les Surfs were six siblings, four brothers and two sisters, from Madagascar, a former French possession off the southeast coast of Africa. They covered the English hit parade in French, Italian, and Spanish. Reviens vite et oublier. Tu seras mi baby. "Be My Baby." Same thing. (Phil Spector’s Wall Of Sound goes international.) Les Surfs added "There’s A Place" (Adieu chagrin) to the Beatles A-Z in French list, and covered the mother of all sing-along oldies, "The Shoop-Shoop Song," translating its original title "It’s In His Kiss" as Va te l’embrasser while leaving in each and every shoop-shoop.

The cover era winds down

The sixties and seventies were the prime years for French covers. By 1980 the music scene in both France and Quebec had grown, and renewed interest in preserving the French language and culture provided a more favorable environment for Francophone artists who wrote their own songs.

Song search results tell me that L’amour est comme une cigarette, Sylvie Vartan’s take on Sheena Easton’s 1982 "Morning Train," was the last French cover of an English song to become a significant chart hit.

Covers live, though, in cabaret performances and on concert CDs, and via the occasional left-field item such as The Beautiful South’s recording of "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" that became Les yeux ouverts ("Eyes Open") in the film "French Kiss."

Old stuff can also sound new again, and everything’s being re-issued on CD. In 2004, Montreal’s Expérience label released "Londres PQ," a compilation of Quebecois covers of British Invasion hits. Expérience followed it in 2005 with "Beatles 101," same concept, Fabs only. Both perfect for bilingual sing along time. (Monsieur Tom turns volume up.) "I don’t care what they say, I won’t stay dans un monde sans amour . . . "