1925–1956: Early life and career

Mauriat was born in 1925 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France where he spent his childhood years. His father was a postal inspector who loved to play classical piano and violin.^[1] Mauriat began playing the piano between the ages of three and four, and his father gave him music lessons when he was eight.^[2] In 1935, at the age of 10, he enrolled in the Conservatoire in Marseille to study classical music, but by the time he was 17, he had fallen in love with jazz and popular music.^[1]

Mauriat had his first job as a postman, but in 1942 when he was 17, he was hired as a band conductor.^[2] His dance band toured concert halls throughout Europe throughout the 1940s.^[1] He was based in Marseilles until 1958 when he moved to Paris.^[2] Mauriat became the musical director for at least two well-known French singers, Charles Aznavour and Maurice Chevalier, touring with both of them.^[1] He arranged 135 songs by Aznavour, including "La Bohème", "La mamma", and "Tu t'laisses aller", and worked with Aznavour until he concentrated on his own touring and recording career in the 1960s.^[2]

1957–1962: First studio recordings

In 1957, Mauriat released his first EP, Paul Mauriat, a four-track RGM release. One of his first songs, Rendez-vous au Lavandou, co-written with André Pascal, was awarded the 1958 Coq d'or de la Chanson Française.

Between 1959 and 1964, Mauriat recorded several albums on the Bel-Air record label under the name Paul Mauriat et Son Orchestre, as well as using the various pseudonyms of Richard Audrey, Nico Papadopoulos, Eduardo Ruo, and Willy Twist, to better reflect the international flavour of his recordings. During this period, Mauriat also released several recordings with Les Satellites, where he creatively arranged vocal backing harmony for such albums as Slow Rock and Twist (1961), A Malypense (1962), and Les Satellites Chantent Noël (1964).

Mauriat composed the music for several French movie soundtracks (also released on Bel-Air), including Un Taxi Pour Tobrouk (1961), Horace 62 (1962), and Faites Sauter La Banque (1964).

1963–1997: International acclaim and later career

Using the pseudonym of Del Roma, Mauriat was to have his first international hit with Chariot, which he wrote in collaboration with friends Franck Pourcel (co-composer), Jacques Plante (French lyrics) and Raymond Lefèvre (orchestrator). In the United States, the song was recorded as "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963.^[3] In 1992, the song was featured prominently in the film Sister Act starring Whoopi Goldberg. More recently, Eminem sampled it in his song "Guilty Conscience".

Mauriat started recording under his own name with Philips Records in 1965 as the label was interested in someone who could compete with Franck Pourcel, who was the dominant figure at that time.^[2] Between 1967 and 1972, he also wrote numerous songs with André Pascal for Mireille Mathieu; Mon Crédo (1,335,000 copies sold), Viens dans ma rue, La première étoile, Géant.

In 1968, his late 1967 cover of the André Popp/Pierre Cour tune "L'amour est bleu" ("Love Is Blue") became a number 1 hit in the US. The song spent five weeks at the top of the charts. Two other Mauriat singles also made the charts in the US — "Love in Every Room"/"Même si tu revenais" (recorded in 1965; charted in 1968) and the title theme from the movie "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang". "Love Is Blue" was the first instrumental to hit number 1 on the Billboard charts since the Tornados hit with "Telstar" in 1962 and the only American number-one single to be recorded in France. The success of the song and the album on which it appeared, Blooming Hits, established Mauriat as an international recording star.^[2][3]

In 1969, Mauriat started his first world tour with his Grand Orchestra, visiting countries like the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and other Latin American countries.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mauriat released albums that paid homage to his musical roots. "Paul Mauriat joue Chopin" and "Classics in the Air" (volumes 1,2,3) feature classical music, like Chopin's "Grande valse brillante", Bach's “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, and Pachelbel's “Canon”, given the “Mauriat spin”. El Cóndor Pasa peaked at number 34 in Australia in 1971^[4]

Mauriat's collaboration with long-time arranger Gérard Gambus resulted in the 1978 disco/funk album Overseas Call, which was later rediscovered by rare disco collectors in the 2000s.^[5] The album was recorded at the Power Station studio in New York and engineered and remixed by disco producer Bob Clearmountain.^[6] One of the tracks, "The Joy of You," was included in DJ Dimitri from Paris's influential 2007 compilation Cocktail Disco.^[7] Dimitri described the Cocktail Disco sub-genre as having "that ubiquitous 4/4 beat and flying open high hat, complemented by rich orchestrations, campy over the top vocals, and an often tropical Latin vibe. Something that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Broadway musical."^[5] He also pointed out that he believes "the same style was called Sleaze back in its days, from roughly 1976 to 1979. There were even DJs specialized in the Sleaze sound which was usually played after hours, in spots with a strong sex-oriented drive."^[5]

Paul Mauriat enjoyed particularly phenomenal success in Japan starting in the late 1960s. He is the only international artist who ever played two sold-out shows in one day at the famous arena Nippon Budokan in Tokyo.^[8] In the early to mid-1980s, Paul Mauriat appeared in several Japanese coffee and wine television commercials, which featured music from his orchestra. He had sold over 15 million albums in Japan and performed over 1,000 shows in 25 Japanese tours by 1996.^[9]

For several decades, some of Mauriat's compositions served as musical tracks for Soviet television programmes and short movies, such as the 1977 animated Polygon, "In the world of animals" (V mire zhivotnykh) and "Kinopanorama", among others.

1998–2006: Retirement and death

Paul Mauriat retired from performing in 1998. He gave his final performance in the Sayonara Concert, recorded live in Osaka, Japan, but his orchestra continued to tour around the world before his death in 2006. Mauriat's former lead pianist, Gilles Gambus, became the orchestra's conductor in 2000 and led successful tours of Japan, China, and Russia. Gambus had worked with Mauriat for more than 25 years. In 2005 a classical French Horn instrumentalist named Jean-Jacques Justafré conducted the orchestra during a tour of Japan and Korea.

On 3 November 2006, Paul Mauriat died in Perpignan, Pyrénées-Orientales, France, at the age of 81.^[10]

Singles

• "Puppet on a String" (1967)
• "Love Is Blue" (U.S. No. 1, 1968; AC No. 1, 1968)
• "Love In Every Room" (U.S. No. 60, 1968; AC No. 7, 1968)
• "San Francisco" (U.S. No. 103, 1968; AC No. 16, 1968)
• "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (U.S. No. 76, 1969; AC No. 24, 1969)
• "Hey Jude" (U.S. No. 119, 1969; AC No. 24, 1969)
• "Je T'aime Moi Non Plus" (AC No. 35, January 1970)
• "Gone Is Love" (AC No. 32, September 1970)
• "Apres Toi (Come What May)" (AC No. 21, 1972)
• "Love Theme from The Godfather" (Butterfly) (1972)
• "Taka Takata" (1972)

Albums