Joe Dassin

Joe Dassin
Background information
Birth name	Joseph Ira Dassin
Born	(1938-11-05)5 November 1938 Brooklyn, New York, United States
Origin	New York City
Died	20 August 1980(1980-08-20) (aged 41) Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
Genres	Chanson French pop
Occupation	Singer-songwriter
Years active	1964–1980
Labels	Columbia (Canada, 1964–71) CBS (elsewhere, and Canada since 1976) RCA (Canada, 1972–76)

Joseph Ira "Joe" Dassin (5 November 1938 – 20 August 1980) was an American-born French singer-songwriter.

Early life

Dassin was born in New York City to American film director Jules Dassin (1911–2008) and Béatrice Launer (1913–1994), a New York-born violinist, who after graduating from a Hebrew High School in the Bronx studied with the British violinist Harold Berkely at the Juilliard School of Music. His father was of Ukrainian- and Polish-Jewish extraction, his maternal grandfather was an Austrian-Jewish immigrant, who arrived in New York with his family at age 11.

He began his childhood first in New York City and Los Angeles. However, after his father fell victim to the Hollywood blacklist in 1950, he and his family moved from place to place across Europe.

Dassin studied at the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, and graduated in Grenoble. Dassin moved back to the United States, where he attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan from 1957 to 1963, winning an undergraduate Hopwood Award for fiction in 1958 and earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1961 and a Master of Arts in 1963, both in Anthropology.

Career

Moving to France, Dassin worked as a technician for his father and appeared as an actor in supporting roles, among others in a number of movies (three) directed by his father, including Topkapi (1964) in which he played the role of Josef.

On 26 December 1964, Dassin signed with CBS Records, making him the first French singer to sign up with an American record label.

By the early 1970s, Dassin's songs were on the top of the charts in France and he had become immensely popular in that country. He was an able polyglot, who recorded songs in German, Spanish, Italian and Greek, as well as French and English. Among his most popular songs are "Les Champs-Élysées" (1969), "L'Été indien" (1975), and "Et si tu n'existais pas" (1975).

Cinema

Joe Dassin has appeared in the following movies:

• 1957 : He Who Must Die, by Jules Dassin : Benos
• 1958 : The Law (1959 film), by Jules Dassin : Nico
• 1964 : Topkapi (film), by Jules Dassin : Joseph
• 1965 : Lady L, by Peter Ustinov : police inspector
• 1965 : Nick Carter and Red Club, by Jean-Paul Savignac : Janos Adler

Personal life

Joe and Jules Dassin with Béatrice Launer in Paris in 1970

Dassin married Maryse Massiéra in Paris on 18 January 1966. Their son Joshua was born two and a half months early on 12 September 1973, and died five days later. Overcome by grief, Joe became deeply depressed. Despite all their efforts, their marriage did not survive. In 1977, one year after their move to their newly built home in Feucherolles, just outside Paris, they divorced.

On 14 January 1978, Dassin married Christine Delvaux in Cotignac. Their first son, Jonathan, was born on 14 September 1978; and their second son, Julien, arrived on 22 March 1980. Christine died in December 1995.

Dassin died from a heart attack during a vacation to Tahiti on 20 August 1980. In 2015, a French documentary revealed he was an alcoholic. He was survived by his two sons, both living in France, as well as his two younger sisters, Richelle (b. 1940) and Julie (b. 1945) and his parents Jules Dassin (1911–2008) and Béatrice Launer (1913–2005). His body is interred in the Beth Olam section of Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA.

Discography

Main article: Joe Dassin discography

External links

• Joe Dassin at IMDb