Le jeu du telephone (Music to Watch Girls By) b/w L’été

Caroline was the stage name of Ginette Lemieux, born in Montréal on December 31, 1950. She was sixteen when she made her first record in 1967, and by the end of 1969 she had released six singles and an album and left the business for good.

Musician, arranger and producer Pierre Nolès brought her to RCA Victor’s Canada International series, managed her, wrote most of what she sang and decided how she would be presented. He built her look around the cropped hair that British model Twiggy had made the style of the moment, and the photograph Télé-Radio-Monde ran in March 1968 shows how carefully that image was kept up. Caroline answered the questionnaire printed on the back cover of Fleurs de papier in her own hand. The Beatles and Joe Tex were her favourite singers, jazz and rhythm and blues her favourite music, travel, camping and dancing her pastimes. She wanted an international career and a part in a film.

Her first single arrived in 1967. ‘Le jeu du téléphone’ was the French adaptation by André Salvet and Claude Carrère of ‘Music to Watch Girls By’, the Sid Ramin and Tony Velona theme that had been everywhere that year. Nolès wrote the flip side, ‘L’été’, and put Les Soeurs Gallant behind her on the vocals. ‘Fleur de papier’ backed with ‘Bambino’ followed before the year was out.

The album Fleurs de papier came out on the same series. Nolès wrote or co-wrote five of the ten songs, supplied French adaptations for two more, and arranged and conducted the orchestra. Marcel LeBlanc produced. The outside material ran from ‘Bambino’, the Neapolitan song Dalida had carried across France in 1956, to Brenton Wood’s ‘Gimme Little Sign’ as ‘Un signe’ and ‘Tennessee Waltz’ as ‘Cette chanson du Tennessee’.

The album also held ‘Bébé requin’, written by Joe Dassin, Jean-Michel Rivat and Frank Thomas and introduced in France by France Gall in 1967. Caroline’s version became her third single in 1968, backed with ‘Un signe’. ‘Les garçons courent après les filles’ and ‘Moi qui n’ai jamais prié’ followed later the same year.

Two more singles appeared in 1969. ‘Mon cœur est un vrai caméléon’ was paired with ‘Chatte angora’, and ‘Ailleurs qu’à Paris’, recorded with Rémy, came out with a new release of ‘Je préfère parler d’amour’ on the reverse. It was her last record.

Caroline left the music business near the end of 1969 and married Claude Palardy, director of promotion for Jupiter Records.

-Robert Williston