La Mer Free Sheet Music
Trenet says that he wrote a first version of the song's lyrics as poem at the age of 16, many years before he came up with a tune for it. The tune came to him while traveling on train in 1943 while he was gazing out of the window at a couple of ponds. He jotted it down on piece of paper and in the afternoon he worked out the details with his pianist Léo Chauliac. That evening they performed it in front of an audience but without having much of an impact.
The song was not recorded before the end of the war. It was first offered to Suzy Solidor, who however declined it. After that the job fell to Roland Gerbeau, who recorded it together with Jo Bouillon's orchestra at the end of 1945. The orchestration and chorus were provided by Albert Lasny. Trenet himself recorded his song for the first time in 1946.
Over the years the song turned out to be rather popular throughout the world and developed into a chanson classic and jazz standard with a large number of prominent artists recording their own versions. Besides the original in French the song was also recorded in several other languages with the English version Beyond the Sea being particularly popular and becoming the signature song for the American singer Bobby Darin. In 1966 there were already over 100 different recordings of La Mer and it was considered to be France's best selling song together with Edith Piaf's La Vie en rose. By the time of Trenet's death in 2001 there were supposedly more than 4000 different recordings of it with over 70 million copies sold in total.
Despite various translations into other languages the original French version was popular outside France and with non-French musicians as well. Trenet published his recording in the US in 1947 and Bing Crosby recorded La Mer on his 1953 album Le Bing: Song Hits of Paris.
Roger Williams recorded it as "La Mer (Beyond the Sea)" in 1956. Charles Trenet's recording of 'La Mer' is choreographed in Matthew Bourne's 1989 ballet suite, Infernal Galop, "a French dance with English subtitles", in which a merman seduces three matelots.
In the 1960s, a cover was done by Cliff Richard with The Shadows. In 1976 Julio Iglesias covered the song on his live album Julio Iglesias – En El Olympia. Dalida did a cover in 1978.
More recent versions include Kristina & Laura, Manlio Sgalambro, Lisa del Bo, Biréli Lagrène, Patricia Kaas, Lola Dutronic, and others.
Instrumental versions were done by Ray Conniff His Orchestra and Chorus, Le Grand Orchestre de Paul Mauriat, Richard Clayderman, Django Reinhardt. - wikipedia
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