1. Compagnons De ChansonGreatest Hits
My father was in the army during the Second World War, and he didn’t get demobilised until 1947. He spent three years in Antwerp, where he collected all these French records by singer-songwriters like Charles Trenet and vocal groups like Compagnons De Chanson. I heard them all the time when I was a kid, and I thought they were absolutely extraordinary – they had a huge influence on me in terms of their arrangements, their songwriting, their unusual harmonies.. There was a lot of music around in my childhood – my mum could do a pretty good Vera Lynn impression, and she looked a bit like her, actually. Dad was from Dumfries, more into his jazz, and was a bit of a bad guitar player. But he played me Django Reinhardt for the first time too – I still remember that now – and that was it for me, really.
