Album Notes

The 24-page liner notes are chock-full of lyrics, translations, and commentary.

Most of these songs could be heard in Paris during its "Left Bank" period of 1946 to 1953-from after the Second World War (when, like champagne for the armistice, so many great French tunes were uncorked) until the onset of the Algerian War (when a different and angrier kind of song was required).

The album reflects the push-and-pull of French and American perspectives on Paris, of those who travel to Paris and those who travail in Paree; of romantic mythological Paris and the Paris of workers, street kids, shopkeepers, combatants of wars and resistance, mothers with babies in the park, and lovers, who really do walk arm-in-arm in my Paris.

ARCHIVAL INSPIRATION: recordings of "Yves Montand and his Songs of Paris"; Gisele McKenzie's "Mam'selle McKenzie"; Edith Piaf at Carnegie Hall 1957; my father's first edition of Jacques Prévert's Paroles; André Maurois' Women of Paris (1958) from which I learned the story of Juliette Gréco and the Kosma songs; the Larousse La chanson française: à travers ses succès (1994); my classnotes from a course on Esthetics at the Université de Besançon; childhood photos of Clo-Clo at the Tuileries, Parc de Montsouris, in a baby carriage, at the beach; and stories about my parents (Flora and Bernard Hommel) as young newlyweds living in the apartment belonging to Sylvia Beach above her bookstore Shakespeare and Co., Place de l'Odéon soon after the Second World War.

about singer/actress Claudia Hommel
Born in Paris, France and raised in Detroit, CLAUDIA HOMMEL has led an active career as a theatrical singer from New York and New Orleans to Chicago and California, and back to Paris. Visit the Who's Who section of our website to learn more about Claudia and the exquisite musicians joining her in "Paris,Paree".