Charlus, singing "Viens Poupoule" on Pathé #2344
(MP3 format, approx. 1.1Mb)

Description:

Charlus pioneered french recording with Pathé as early as 1898, when the company just started selling cylinders. He became a very popular singer of the early 20th century and did not limit himself to popular songs. He was also famous for his "chansons grivoises" and sketches. He was known to spend many days recording, and he reported himself to record 40 songs in the morning and another 40 in the afternoon. Yet he could have really done so considering the hundreds of titles known to exist, it is more relevant to think that he recorded 80 titles per day during the brown wax years, when cylinders were not yet moulded, and required to be recorded one after one. Pathé catalogs list hundreds of titles recorded by Charlus, both on cylinder and disc. And of course, Charlus also recorded for other companies like Columbia and Edison...

Viens Poupoule is also one of the most popular songs of the early 1900s. Many artists recorded it (Mayol, etc), even in the 1930s. Both Charlus and Mayol recorded this song on Céleste cylinder, a very special cylinder as big as two concert (stentor in french) cylinders which last 5 minutes at normal speed (up to 15 at lower speed). This #2344 cylinder lasts 2m20s: it starts and ends almost on the edges. Pathé did not provide recordings of the same quality than Edison, hence a not-so-good sound, mostly due to the pantographic transfers which added some noise to the sound of the master recording.