“The pen-worker tracing his drab, black letters to paper eventually forgets that words have a sensual beauty. The voice of Gréco comes as if to remind him of this. In a soft, warm light she brushes against them, setting them ablaze.” Jean-Paul Sartre “From François Mauriac and Jacques Prévert to Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré and many, many others, this Great Lady, in the course of an exceptional career spanning some six decades, has invariably supplied us with proof that the French Chanson genre is indeed an “Art with a capital A”. There’s no doubt about it: the 36 titles carefully selected for this set by the knowledgeable Dany Lallemand, all recorded between 1950 and 1957, are the most emblematic songs in Juliette Gréco’s repertoire. Claude Colombini-Frémeaux