Dalida spent twelve days in Poland in July of 1963. She sang in Katowice, Kraków, Gdańsk, Poznań and Warsaw. The song in the clip is "Achète moi un juke-box".
Lucjan Kydryński interviewed the artist for the "Przekrój" magazine:
- Why do you stay with a rather frivolous repertoire. Why don't you sing literary songs, acting songs? [Polish: "piosenka literacka", "piosenka aktorska" - perhaps "chanson" would be a good English translation?]
- For two reasons. Firstly, I have... a big strong voice, with a pleasant - I think - but ordinary, normal tone. Such a voice does not suit a literary-actor song. (...) Secondly, despite eight years in France, I still have a poor French accent. This accent in popular songs, in hits, is somehow helpful to me, the audience likes it, but in songs that require a certain "sculpting" of the lyrics, it would be unbearable.
(...)
- How often do you record albums?
- Once every two months - four songs. You have no idea how much a singer of the commercial type - and I count myself among them - has to be careful not to be forgotten on the record market.
(...)
- You are a singer with a so-called commercial repertoire. Do you therefore earn a lot?
- I think I do. Songwriters of my type earn a lot, especially on recordings. Sometimes I get more per record - or even per performance - than Rubinstein, for example. This is certainly unfair to some extent, but - the money here is a kind of compensation for other things. Rubinstein, for example, can play - and plays magnificently! - at seventy-odd years of age; the artistic life of singers is naturally much, much shorter; after that, the possibility of earning money ends altogether. Secondly - artists of his genre live long in the memory of listeners, they remain in the history of music. Singers - like hit songs - pass quickly, are forgotten, are heroines only of today.
(...)
- Is 'The Four Dreamers', with whom you sang in Poland, a new band?
- Yes. A new one for me. Until now, I have worked with a band with the usual, traditional line-up. Bear in mind, however, that a singer of my type has to move with the times if she wants to stay at the top. At the moment, the pinnacle of fashion in Paris is the English band 'The Shadows' accompanying Cliff Richard. You can't ignore what's gaining mad success; so I hired 'The Four Dreamers' mainly because they have an instrumental line-up identical to 'The Shadows': three electric guitars, drums. Just what the audience demands now. Except that, with me, it is naturally joined by Guy Motta at the piano.
- On several occasions, Polish audiences complained that they played too loudly.
- A matter of getting used to it. Do you know why my band is called the 'Four Dreamers'? Because in France, of all the bands of this genre, they are the ones who play the most softly, I would even say 'sweetly'. From rock and roll concerts in Paris, the youngsters usually leave with a headache. But delighted!
przekroj.pl/archiwum/numery/958/1
Dalida visited Poland again in February of 1983.
The clip was taken from the Polish Film Chronicle: 35mm.online/en/vod/chronicles/polish-film-chronicle-63-32a
#newsreel #prl #1960s #popmusic #dalida #live