LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Charles Aznavour
built 669 days ago
Charles Aznavour (born May 22, 1924) is an Armenian-French singer, songwriter and actor. He is one of France's most popular and long lasting singers, and ... one of the most well-known French singers in other countries. He has appeared in more than 60 movies and written more than 1000 songs (including 150 in English, 100 in Italian, 70 in Spanish, and 50 in German). He has sold over 100 million albums. Aznavour started his final tour in late 2006.
Source:
Born on May 22, 1924 Charles Aznavour is a French-Armenian singer, songwriter and actor. His birth name was Shahnour Varenagh Aznavourian. Charles is perhaps the most famous, renowned and best known french music hall entertainer in the world. He is well known for his emotional, bitter and sweet songs he has written, composed and sung. His song's rhythm and lyrics seem to incarnate the gist of French popular song. Not only for songs but ... he is famous for his appearances on screen in such wildly divergent fare such as in "Shoot the Piano Player", "Candy", and "The Tin Drum". Charles has been given the status as the representative French popular culture icon is something of an irony for a him. Its because Charles loves to identify himself most closely with his Armenian heritage.
Source:
By the age of nine, Charles Aznavour knew he wanted to be a singer. Born to performer parents who fled the Turkish massacre of Armenians in the 1920s, Aznavour (born Chahnour Varenagh Aznaourian) dropped out of school before age 10 and was performing in beer halls in Paris and around the countryside as he matured. Part of a traveling duo, Aznavour began to compose songs while his partner went out whoring. When Edith Piaf heard his work, she paved his way: she mentored the singer, convinced him to go solo, and brought him on her international tours. Over 600 compositions later, Aznavour is respected as the man who brought class issues and gritty street tales into the chanson tradition. (Chanson was a major style of French music before rock 'n' roll.) A superb stylist and inimitable (if maudlin) lyricist, Aznavour ... acted in films by Francois Truffaut and Jean Cocteau.
Source:
From All Movie Guide: Born in Paris to an Armenian family, sad-eyed, sinewy singer/composer Charles Aznavour started performing as a dancer at age nine. During the 1950s, Aznavour rose to stardom as a soulful interpreter of melancholy romance ballads. Many filmgoers assume that his film debut was as the gangster-obsessed musician in Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1962), but in fact Aznavour made his first film, Le Tete Contre les Murs, in 1959. Many of his movie roles have been in the same noirish vein as his Piano Player performance; in the 1975 remake of Ten Little Indians, he was on screen only long enough to brood over his miserable past and sing a sad refrain before he is poisoned. Busy in films as both performer and composer into the late 1980s, Aznavour is the sort of wordly, hard-shelled performer who'd seem naked without a cigarette dangling from his lips and a half-consumed drink on the top of the piano. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Source:
Charles Aznavour was born in Paris on May 22 1924. In fact it was quite by chance that young Charles was born in the French capital. He should have been born in the United States, but his parents, Armenian immigrants, were temporarily based in France awaiting an American visa when their son unexpectedly arrived in the world.
Source:
In 1998, Charles Aznavour was chosen as Entertainer of the Century by CNN and users of Time Online from around the globe. Aznavour was recognized as the century's outstanding performer, with nearly 18% of the total vote, edging out Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. After Frank Sinatra's death, Charles Aznavour is the last of these "Greats".
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Charles Aznavour