Graeme Allwright

Graeme Allwright (7 November 1926 – 16 February 2020) was a New Zealand-born French singer and songwriter. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s as a French language interpreter of the songs of American and Canadian songwriters such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger, and remained active into his nineties.

Life and career

Early life Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Allwright grew up in Hāwera before attending Wellington College. While growing up he heard jazz and American folk songs on radio broadcasts for US troops stationed at Paekākāriki and Tītahi Bay, and sang with his family at local fairs. He started acting in Wellington at the age of 15, and won a scholarship to attend the Old Vic theatre school in London. He travelled to England by ship, working as a cabin boy to pay his way, and began training and working as an actor in London. He was offered a place at the Royal Shakespeare Company but turned it down so as to move to France in 1948 with his girlfriend Catherine Dasté, a fellow theatre student who was the daughter of actor and theatre director Jean Dasté. Allwright worked as a carpenter on theatre sets while gradually becoming fluent in the French language. He and Catherine married in 1951; they later divorced.

Music career Allwright then worked in the vineyards of Burgundy and ran a theatre group in Pernand-Vergelesses, while learning the guitar and listening to the records of American singers such as Woody Guthrie, Tom Paxton and Pete Seeger. He lived in Blois, where he worked in a psychiatric hospital, and then settled in Dieulefit where he taught English and started a children's theatre group. He discovered an aptitude for translation while adapting New Zealand stories into French for his students, and then, after moving to Saint-Étienne, began translating American songs into French. In the early 1960s he began performing in small clubs in Paris, where he met fellow singer Colette Magny and the actor and singer Marcel Mouloudji, who were impressed with Allwright's ability to adapt the lyrics of writers such as Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen into French. which included adaptations of two songs by Leonard Cohen ("Suzanne" and "The Stranger Song"), two by Tom Paxton, and others by Pete Seeger, Jackson C. Frank, and Roger Miller. His most popular song was the title track, adapted from the Peter, Paul and Mary song "Very Last Day". The stress caused by the song's unexpected success led Allwright to leave his young family in France and go travelling, initially with a friend to Egypt and Ethiopia, where he spent six months in the city of Harar. He said: "I didn’t even think of the singing career I left behind. I was living something completely different and discovering another world." In 1970 he released the album A long distant present from thee..."Becoming", a collaboration with other musicians described as "a sprawling psychedelic album that draws on his experiences in India", followed by the English-language album Recollections (1971), and Jeanne d'Arc (1972), comprising his own material as well as songs by Leonard Cohen.

Allwright also became well known for his French lyrics adaptation "Petit Garçon" for the Christmas song "Old Toy Trains" by Roger Miller. In 2014, the song was adopted as the official song for the annual French charity event Téléthon 2014 and was recorded by the campaign's sponsor (parrain), the Canadian French singer Garou accompanied by a young singer Ryan. It also appeared in Garou's Christmas new album It's Magic released 1 December 2014 in France.

A biography, Graeme Allwright par lui-même, by Jacques Vassal, was published in 2018.

Death Allwright died aged 93 on 16 February 2020, in the retirement home in Seine-et-Marne where he had been living for a year.

Discography Albums Graeme Allwright (aka Le trimardeur), 1965, BAM. Graeme Allwright (aka Joue, joue, joue), 1966, Mercury. Le jour de clarté, 1968, Mercury. Recollections, 1970, Mercury. A Long Distant Present from Thee ... "Becoming,", 1971, Mercury 6459 100 Jeanne d'Arc, 1972, Mercury. Graeme Allwright chante Leonard Cohen, 1973, Mercury. À l'Olympia, 1973, Mercury. De passage, 1975, Mercury. Questions..., 1978, Mercury. Condamnés?, 1979, Mercury. Graeme Allwright et Maxime Le Forestier enregistement au Palais des Sports, 1980, Mercury. Ombres, 1981, Mercury. Lumière, 1992, EPM. Live, 1994, EPM. Graeme Allwright & The Glenn Ferris Quartet, 2000, EPM.