By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger I like this post, so here it is again. . Some of you read this post, but there is one addition* regarding Madeleine Peyroux the jazz singer working a corner in Paris. The year is 1991, and we were visiting with our son Michael. We had been there before and we liked the Left Bank the best, especially the area near the oldest church in town (St. Germaine des Pres) located on the Boulevard St. Germaine.
You can walk that neighborhood and find bookstalls along the River Seine, Musee D’Orsay—home of the Impressionists, funky neighborhoods near the Sorbonne, antique shops, bistros where you can’t get a bad meal, small hotels with floor to ceiling windows and no elevators, and wonderful food markets.
Boats moored along the Seine. Paul Goldfinger photo ©
Behind the old church where the Blvd. St. Germaine meets Rue de Rennes, is a tiny park where you can relax, called the Rue de l’Abbaye—a respite from the bustle all around it. But also at that intersection is the famous Café Les Deux Magots where Hemingway, Picasso and other artists and intellectuals used to hang out. It’s so much fun to sip an espresso there and people-watch.
Park adjacent to the church: St. Germaine des Pres. Paul Goldfinger photo ©.
One evening Michael, Eileen, and I took a walk. At the corner, in front of the church and across from the café, we heard a street band playing. They were called “The Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band,” composed mostly of American musicians. But we were most intriqued by their vocalist, a seventeen year old young woman from New York and California who sounded like Billie Holiday.
She had been living in Paris since she moved there at age 16 with her mom. Madeleine Peyroux is now a jazz star who performs around the world, but we think of her standing on the sidewalk with a floppy hat on, charming the crowd.
Below is the Café Deux Magots which dates back to 1875—just a few years younger than Ocean Grove.
And below that is Madeleine Peyroux singing in French. The song is “J’ai Deux Amours” (I have two loves). It is from her album “Careless Love.” That’s a good song for an album with that name.
Cafe Deux Magots. Paris. 1991. By Paul Goldfinger
Presenting Madeleine Peyroux: * I just found a photo which I took that evening in 1991 across the street from Deux Maggots and on the corner of the church. For years I wondered why I didn’t photograph her.
The teen age Madeleine Peyroux singing with an American band in Paris. Paul Goldfinger photo ©. Copywrite. 1991.
Ahh. There is nothing like Paris in the summer. I actually proposed to my wife in Paris over 20 years ago. If you haven’t been there, you must try to make it there.
Love all the blogs
Especially the cafe in Paris reminiscence.
Loved being there! When we were
there we met a French couple that invited us to their apt and out to dinner
That was a long time ago!
The world was different then!
Hugs to all
Bev
Here’s one of my Paris stories.
My grandmother was an excellent country-style cook. During the Depression she had run her own small restaurant in the little Texas prairie town where our family lived. The dish of hers that I loved best was roast beef with some kind of luscious sauce. She served it often on special occasions.
That was in the 40s and 50s. Flash forward to the 1980s. I’m in Paris, I’m in a little French restaurant for lunch, and I order a beef stew dish, not really knowing what I’m in for.
To my incredible surprise, what arrived at my table was my grandmother’s roast beef! The taste and texture were exactly the same. I hadn’t eaten it for decades, but — voila! — I recognized it immediately.
I have no idea how my grandmother’s roast beef found its way to that Paris restaurant. She was born on a family farm of parents who were of German extraction. Did those people keep alive some old European recipe that eventually found its way to that Paris restaurant? Did my grandmother, some time in the dim past, copy her roast beef dish out of some American magazine that had gotten it from a source in France? I’ll never know.
Ahhh..Springtime in Paris. I was really lucky to be sent by Bambergers to Paris to buy at the Pret-a-Porter (ready to wear) fashion shows. We stayed at the small Hotel Lenox (no elevator, small bar, smaller rooms) on Rue D’Universite and were told we had to have drinks at your Cafe Deux Magots to see all sorts of famous people. By the second round it became apparent there were just a lot of American tourists looking at each other (the US$ was very strong in the early 80s; even Hermes silk scarves were affordable). “Those were the days my friends”…or so the song goes.