By the way, what is yéyé?

Philippe Edouard, PopArchives correspondent in France, traces the origins and aftermath of yéyé. 

 

"French yéyé is the best music in the world."

This assessment by the Californian singer-songwriter April March is very flattering to French pop, but it may be exaggerated.

But by the way, what is yéyé?

The expression indicates a musical style that appeared in France at the beginning of the Sixties, influenced by the Anglo-Saxon pop successes of this period. Nowadays it is even applied to the whole decade of the Sixties, without distinction among musical genres.

Saturday June 22, 1963: Radio Europe1 organises what would be known as La Folle Nuit de la Nation (mad night at the Nation), a free outdoor concert of rock and twist at Place de la Nation in Paris, performed by the idols of the moment.

Europe1 hopes to bring together 20,000 young people, but there will be 150,000 teenagers. Some speak of 200,000 fans.

The next day, the government and the press are terrified. Journalists report the damage caused by the "Blousons Noirs" (hooligans, lit. "black jackets"). The organisation, the singers, and the fans all go down in flames. The event is so phenomenal that the press around the world begins to talk about it.

On July 6, 1963, the sociologist Edgar Morin publishes an article on this phenomenon, in the newspaper Le Monde. He intelligently describes the ongoing changes in youth.

For the first time the word yéyé appears in the press.

Edgar Morin is therefore seen to this day as the father of the word yéyé. Now 98 years old, he always takes pleasure in talking about his creation and nobody finds anything to complain about, except certain musicologists. Did he find it in a flash of genius? False! He visited the haunts of young people, including the famous music club Golf-Drouot in Paris.

The band Long Chris et Les Daltons are regulars at Golf. Their guitarist, Jean-Pierre Bordi, alias Peter, who spends his life there, does not stop to finish his sentences when he enthuses about it: "It's yeah, yeah..!”

(The group's rhythm guitarist Gérard François, aka “Wimpy”, says yer, yer for yeah, yeah, and so is nicknamed Yer Yer.)

In this way the interjection yé-yé was born, not spontaneously, but in the confines of Golf Drouot where the expression became part of everyday life. And the yeah! yeah! that we often hear in Anglo-Saxon rock songs is adopted by their French counterparts.

On disc, Georges Aber used it for the first time in early 1963 with ‘Des ya ya des yé yé’. However, up until mid-1963, the singers of the 60s were called simply rockers or twisters or even copains (buddies) and idoles (idols).

With the advent of the twist, the recording industry had organized itself and quickly recovered from the surge of rock.

In 1962 Claude François and Sheila, the prototype yéyé artists, appear. They sing of the twist, but also of the new trends like the hully-gully, mashed-potatoes, and Madison. It is a variété rythmée (pop music) that appeals to young people and reassures parents. Record labels promote many idols who, for one or more EPs, will discover glory in a more or less ephemeral way.

1963 marks the start of the British invasion. Rock singers and French British-beat groups have a hard time being heard, unlike during the first wave of rock and twist. Besides, the rockers are pure and hard, so there is no question of them going yéyé. It is marshmallow, a less virile form of their music, worked over by showbiz.

1966 comes around. The older generation was used to being more or less contemptuous or indifferent to yéyé.

Suddenly they are shaken by a newcomer. Antoine, with an air of folk-rock tinged with the jerk, throws everything out the window, finding his generation as old-fashioned as the old. His song Les élucubrations d'Antoine [YouTube] revolutionizes French music but also shakes up society. Talking about over-the-counter contraceptive pills in supermarkets was totally subversive at the time.

Jacques Dutronc and Michel Polnareff also disrupt the music with original lyrics that no longer speak only of love affairs but of a society of consumerism and sex. Girls are not to be outdone: Charlotte Leslie clearly says: "Girls, they are made for making love" [YouTube]

This moral revolution lands two years before the May 1968 student revolt which will lead to huge strikes and radical changes in society.

Strictly speaking, yéyé is of the period between 1963 and 1966. It could go back to mid-1962, but the name does not officially exist. And it could continue after 1966, but the term becomes more and more overused.

This musical phenomenon shines in the French-speaking world - Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Quebec - but also in Italy, Portugal, Lebanon, and even in Japan. Its influence is also felt in South America.

The other country of yéyé (as with the EP) is Spain, which will reproduce in its own way the French wave. [YouTube]

In 2013, in England, the music journalist, author, singer, and publisher Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe published compilation albums and a book of French pop singers from the 60s. He called this series 'Yé-Yé Girls'. Since then, the name has toured the world. He can be reproached for being a bit of a copycat, but thanks to him everything is finally official. Since then, other yéyé collections have appeared in Anglo-Saxon markets.

By the way, how is it written? Yé-yé or yéyé? Or yeyé as in Spain, or even yèyè as in Italy? Do you need a plural “s”?

Originally, yé-yé is a double interjection so we put in the hyphen. Interjections do not take a plural. Thereafter the attached form yéyé becomes plural, yéyés. But whatever the spelling, it remains an emblem of freedom for the youth of the 60s.

Philippe.
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Further reading, viewing:

Christian Eudeline, Anti Yéyé (2006)
Remarkable work on singers and beat groups who had a difficult career because of yéyé and the British Invasion. (In French. The title is inspired by Pierre Vassiliu's 1963 song Twist Anti-Yé.)

YéYé Révolution 1962-1966 (2010)

TV documentary (in French) at YouTube. A visual and musical treat, featuring many key figures of the period including Sheila, Claude François, Sylvie Vartan, Dick Rivers, Francoise Hardy, and Johnny Hallyday.

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Update 2022:

Gareth Jones, French Pop From Music Hall to Yé-Yé 

Newly published and well-reviewed, this will be followed by a second volume up to the late 1960s. The author is a friend of PopArchives who is credited in several places for his contributions.

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Only in Oz (10) Bill Justis - Tamoure (1963)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

First posted 2009, extensively revised 2023

10. Bill Justis - Tamoure (with the Stephen Scott Singers)

(Heinz Hellmer - Wolf Petersen - M. Singleton - B. Everette [pseud. Bill Justis]; arranged by Bill Justis. Based on a 1956 composition by Yves Roche)
Song also known as Tamouré (The Dance Of Love) or Vini Vini or Wini-Wini
USA 1963
Smash single (USA) #1812
Philips single (Australia) #BF-26
Australian charts: #1 Sydney #1 Melbourne #1 Brisbane #1 Adelaide #1 Perth (#1 Australia)

Strictly speaking, Tamouré has an acute accent over the 'e'. Most English databases - and the title printed on the 45 - leave it off, although it is restored on the record's sleeve.

In the annals of Only in Oz this is a classic case, an American record that topped the Australian charts¹ but only managed a ripple in the US: #7 in Chicago, #101 nationally.² As far as I can see it wasn't a hit in the UK, Europe, South Africa or even Canada where it peaked in the high thirties.

So, let's say Only in Oz.

Bill Justis (1927-1982) started out as a trumpeter, but from the early 60s he worked in Nashville as a producer, composer, arranger and musical director.³

To the record-buying public, though, Justis was probably best known for his earlier hit instrumental Raunchy (1957, #2 US), recorded at Sun Records in Memphis where he had been musical director before moving to Nashville. He played the sax on Raunchy and co-wrote it with the guitarist on the record, Sid Manker. It was the only single in Bill Justis's name to chart Top 40 in the US, but it has been much played and recorded over the years.

One notable Bill Justis enterprise in Nashville was his collaboration with keyboardist Jerry Smith as Cornbread & Jerry. Their first recording, made in Memphis before the move to Nashville, was Li'l Ole Me (covered in Australia by Warren Carr), but they later added a female chorus and put two singles onto the US charts as The Dixiebelles with Cornbread & Jerry: (Down At) Papa Joe's (1963, #9 USA) and Southtown USA (1964, #15 USA).

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Tamouré is an English-language version of a Tahitian song known as Wini-Wini or Vini Vini. The tamouré or tamure is a Tahitian dance. 

There are many recordings with variations of tamouré or vini vini in their titles, not all of them the same song.⁴ Note that the sleeve of Bill Justis's Tamoure single says THE FRENCH DANCE RAGE COMES TO AMERICA.

Whatever its traditional antecedents, the modern hit song was composed by Yves Roche (1929-2022), a French musician, producer, composer and scholar of Polynesian music who worked for Radio Tahiti and lived in Tahiti from his mid-20s until his death in 2022.

The most detailed account of the song's history I've seen is at French Wikipedia's Yves Roche article. (I think it is wrong about Nat Mara's record, though: see below.) 

I have confined myself here to some notable recordings that influenced Bill Justis's Tamoure or at least resemble it:

• Terorotua and His Tahitians - Vini Vini (USA 1958) is the original version of Bill Justis's Tamoure. It appeared on their ABC-Paramount album, Lure Of Tahiti. The writer credit is to Yves Roche.

• Nat Mara and His Tahitians - I Vini Vini Vana Vana (NZ 1962). On Viking (NZ) album VP-80 Peeping At Papeete. See listings at discogs.com and National Library NZ).
The album carries no writer credits, but French Wikipedia credits Singleton-Everette/Justis for this as an English adaptation released in 1958. The official audio of I Vini Vini Vana Vana posted by Viking at YouTube here and (from another album) here has similarities to the Bill Justis record but it isn't an English adaptation. Both are dated 1962.

•  Les Kavika - Tamouré Vini Vini (France 1962): One of four tamouré dance tracks on EP Dansez le tamouré (Vogue, France). Tamouré Vini Vini is the same song as the familiar Tamoure with French lyrics copyrighted in the US by Kavaka (real name Remy Blouin) along with the arrangement by Jacques Barouh.

• Die Tahiti Tamourés - Wini-Wini (Germany January 1963) on Polydor, a hit in 1963 in Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium. The writer credits are to Heinz Hellmer and Wolf Petersen. The arrangement sounds the same as on the Bill Justis record.

• Bill Justis - Tamoure (USA March 1963) also credits Heinz Hellmer and Wolf Petersen along with Bill Everette (Bill Justis) and Margaret Singleton (Margie Singleton?). Bill Justis is credited as arranger.

• Betty Curtis - Wini-Wini (Italy 1963) Single by Italian singer (Roberta Corti 1934-2006), peaked at #12 Italy. Credits Heinz Hellmer (see above two versions) and Italian composer-producer Vito Pallavicini.

 • Manuia and Maeva - Vini Vini (USA February 1965), single on Almo, credits Yves Roche as composer but it has fresh English lyrics written by Steve Graham and Leon Pober.
An April 1963 US copyright registration credits Roche as co-composer with Tahitian cinematographer, music collector and studio owner Gaston Guilbert, with English lyrics by Graham and Pober, and French lyrics by Roche.

• Dick and Dee Dee - Vini Vini (USA August 1965) single with the writer credit to Yves Roche

• The Originals website lists some other versions 1958-2005.

Die Tahiti-Tamourés, 1963 European hit.

Finally, a case of Not in Oz: Australians were also contrarian about Bill Justis's big hit, Raunchy (1957). It was a #2 on Billboard, #11 in the UK, but Australians preferred to put two cover versions - by Billy Vaughn and Ernie Freeman - onto the local charts. (Another version by Billy Strange popped up on our charts too, but not till 1965.) 

Thanks to Joop and Walter for lighting up this trail for me.
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Footnotes
1. Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books. In this case the other chart books agree: The Book for Sydney and Thirty Years Of Hits for Melbourne both have Tamoure at #1. See also the Top 100 Singles website, sourcing the Australian (Kent) Music Reports for 1963: #1 Australia
2. The Smash Records Story at Both Sides Now.
3. Bill Justis biography at All Music Guide.
4. A couple of examples of tamure/vini vini variations, although different songs from the Bill Justis Tamoure:(i) The Wikipedia article on tāmūrē mentions a post-World War II popularising tāmūrē song by Louis Martin.(ii) As my friend Joop Jansen points out, there is a 1930s recording by Tino Rossi, Vieni Vieni [YouTube], also recorded, for example by The Gaylords in the 50s, but again, not the song we know through Bill Justis.

Bill Justis - Tamoure (USA 1963)

Betty Curtis - Wini-Wini (Italy 1963)

Die Tahiti Tamourés - Wini-Wini (Germany 1963)

Les Kaveka - Tamouré Vini Vini (France 1962)

Nat Mara and His Tahitians - I Vini Vini Vana Vana (NZ 1962)

Terorotua and His Tahitians - Vini Vini (USA 1958)

Mike Stoller on the SS Andrea Doria

Last week, updating my page on Poison Ivy, I wanted to write the briefest possible summary of The Coasters and their songwriter-producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It ended up being a mere three paragraphs with a bunch of links for further reading, but I ended up reading a whole book about The Coasters along the way.

The Coasters, by British music journalist Bill Millar, was published in 1974 and it's probably still the best starting point. It's much more than a fan's bio of The Coasters: it's a history of a cultural and social revolution, a story that starts with the rise of marginalised, even improvised, R&B record labels in the 1940s and ends up with major labels on the mainstream charts by the end of the 50s. Bill Millar is a fastidious researcher but he's an enthusiast as well: an irresistible combination.













(Back then, Bill liked to chase up groups performing under famous names that didn't live up to their corporate branding. There's a photo in another of his books, The Drifters (1971), that shows him bailing up some members of a "New Drifters" group: he looks like a chap who's not going to give up till he nails the matter, no matter how discomfited his subjects may be.)

One night last week, when I'd only just started reading The Coasters, I was flipping around the vast wasteland of pay-tv and saw part of a documentary about an ocean collision off Massachusetts in 1956. On a foggy night a Swedish ship, the Stockholm, ran into the Andrea Doria, an Italian passenger liner heading for New York. I flipped away again when they were picking up the survivors (1660 out of about 1700 on board the Andrea Doria survived).

That turned out to be quite a co-incidence. Next day, I read Bill Millar's account of Leiber and Stoller's deal with Atlantic Records in New York, when they wound up their Los Angeles label Spark and started recording for Atlantic.

Here's how Bill Millar tells about the first time Mike Stoller met his new associates in New York:

With the royalties which had accrued from The Cheers' Black Denim Trousers ¹, Stoller had taken a vacation in Europe and after a stay of three months, he and one thousand others embarked for the USA on the Andrea Doria. Fifty-four passengers never arrived. On 25 July 1956 the Andrea Doria collided with a Swedish steamer, the Stockholm, near Nantucket island and sank during the early hours of the morning.

Survivors, including Stoller, were picked up by the Cape Ann, a fruit freighter from Bremerhaven, which headed for New York: "Jerry was in New York for a convention and he was waiting on the dock with the whole Atlantic crew. it was the first time I had met Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Herb Abramson because Jerry and Lester [Sills] had fixed the Spark deal while I stayed in LA. Anyhow I was OK because I'd been taken off the Andrea Doria by a lifeboat. So we talked and then we went back to California to record The Coasters."

(The Coasters, pp. 73-74)

Two members of The Robins, a vocal group who recorded on the Spark label, had decided to stick with Leiber and Stoller in their deal between West Coast and East Coast, and they formed the core of The Coasters (get it?). At this time they were still recording in LA for these early sessions which yielded their first two hits, Searchin' (#3 USA) and Young Blood (#8).

So it is that Mike Stoller, 23 years, appears with his first wife Meryl in many accounts of the Andrea Doria disaster: see, for example, this passenger list at AndreaDoria.0rg.












. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Peter Stoller (VP at Leiber/Stoller Productions) points out that the Stollers' European trip was in fact funded by royalties from another Cheers recording, Bazoom (I Need Your Lovin’) (1954). While in Paris, the Stollers heard Édith Piaf perform L'Homme à la Moto, her hit French version of Black Denim Trousers.

References:
Bill Millar, The Drifters, London, November Books, 1971 [Amazon]
Bill Millar, The Coasters, London, W.H. Allen, 1974 [Amazon]

Further reading:
Interview with Mike Stoller by Goldmine's Ken Sharp.
Pages linked from my Poison Ivy page.
AndreaDoria.org
SS Andrea Doria at Wikipedia.

The Juanita Banana phenomenon

The Peels - Juanita Banana
(Tash Howard - Murray Kenton)Arranged & conducted by Charlie Fox.
A Howard-Smith Production
USA 1966
Karate single #522
Stateside (UK) single #513
Karate single in Australia (pictured) released through Astor

Juanita Banana is a comic song about a Mexican banana grower's daughter who makes it as a singing star in the big city [lyrics]. When "Juanita Banana" sings the chorus it is an operatic caricature, a worked-over version of Caro Nome, an aria from Giusseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.

The title echoes Chiquita Banana, the 1944 jingle about the cartoon mascot of the United Fruit Company, the international banana trader that evolved into the present-day Chiquita Brands International.

I first heard Juanita Banana when it was excerpted on a novelty record by Dickie Goodman, Batman And His Grandmother (1966). This was a cut-in or break-in record (a distant ancestor of the mashup), where a comedian would do a commentary as, say, a news reporter and snippets of current songs would be inserted to fit in with the story.

Although Juanita Banana has been reissued on the likes of 25 All Time Novelty Hits and Definitive 60s, Vol. 1 it never was a national hit in the USA, UK or Australia. Even on the sprinkling of regional US and Canadian charts posted to ARSA the best it manages is #16 at WIXY in Cleveland, and 30 Years of Canadian Charts has it peaking at #29.

So much for the Anglo world, where it seems to be one of those songs that has stuck in the memory longer than its initial popularity justifies. The extraordinary thing about Juanita Banana is the number of times it has been recorded in non-English-speaking countries. Even the Peels' original version was popular in The Netherlands, where it charted at #13.

When I started writing this post, I was going to compile a definitive list of versions, but I've given up that idea: the more I search, the more I find.  Instead, here's a partial list. Some of the exact years are hard to pinpoint, but I believe these are all from the 60s. [Update 2012: See Phil Milstein's recent post at Probe which includes a downloadable .zip file of 21 Juanita Banana versions and related tracks.]

The Peels (USA, 1966)
Henri Salvador (France)
Billy Mo (Germany)
Luis Aguile (Spain, by Argentinian singer)
Quartetto Cetra (Italy)
Het Cocktail Trio (Netherlands)
Mal Sondock (Germany, by US singer-deejay, 1966)
Georgie Dann (Spain, by French singer, 1966)
Los Beta (Spain, 1966)
J. R. Corvington (Argentina)
Los Tres Sudamericanos (Paraguayan group; on Spain's Belter label)
Raymond Boisserie (France, 1967)
Marcello Minerbi (Italy, 1966, #9 Austria)
German Moreno (Phillipines, 1968: he also appeared in a 1968 film called Juanita Banana. Details at IMDb are sparse.)
The Monks (single on Vogue. I don't think these are the Yanks in Germany we love so much, but a French band with J. C. Pelletier.)
Jean Bonal Et Son Orchestre (France)
Teddy Martin & His Las Vegas Boys (France?)
The Reels (Spain: not the Aussie band)

A completist would also include Huanita Banana:

7 Mladih (Yugoslavia, 1966)
Radmila Mikic Miki (Yugoslavia, 1967)

That's it for me, but if too much still isn't enough, feel free to browse the 41 000 hits at Google for "juanita banana" (and nearly 1000 for "huanita banana").

How about the small print?

The Mad Music Archive identifies co-writer Tash Howard as the
producer who put together The Peels, a studio group (not surprising, somehow), and gives some background about the business end of the song's publication.

Tash Howard (c.1941-1977), originally a drummer, had changed his name from Howard Tashman.¹ He has 147 compositions listed at BMI, including a follow-up single Juanita Banana Part 2 and (with Charlie Fox) its B-side Rosita Tomato on Karate #533. Between the two Juanitas was Scrooey Mooey on Karate #527, another Tash Howard song (registered title: Screwee Mooey) .

Murray Kenton has eleven songs in his BMI repertoire, the US Copyright Office gives his real name as Morris Temkin and that's about all I know. Howard's co-producer, Smith, is a mystery to me.

Arranger and conductor Charlie Fox is not Charlie Foxx of Mockingbird fame, but he does seem to be the songwriter and film composer Charles Fox, whose repertoire includes Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly, Jim Croce's I Got A Name and the Happy Days theme (all with lyricist Norman Gimbell).

You can read about Charles Fox's distinguished career at the Songwriters' Hall of Fame which - alas! - offers no further insight into his contribution to Juanita Banana.



The Peels - Juanita Banana.mp3
Verdi - Caro None from Rigoletto.mp3
(Maria Callas 1952 - excerpt)
Dickie Goodman - Batman And His Grandmother.mp3
(Juanita first heard at 21 secs.)Henri Salvador - Juanita Banana.mp3 (French)
Billy Mo - Juanita Banana.mp3 (German)
Luis Aguile - Juanita Banana.mp3 (Spanish)

Update: For more audio, including versions, other Peels songs, and related tracks, all in a downloadable zip file, see Phil Milstein's May 2012 post at Probe.
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Footnote: 1. For confirmation that Tash Howard was born Howard Tashman, see the comment below from Holly, who adds some background about the co-writer and producer behind Juanita Banana. (Also mentioned at the Joey Powers page of Harry Young and Larry N. Houlieff.)Not-to-be-confused-with Dept: There is also a London Indie/Pop/Rock singer called Tash Howard (see her MySpace). Tash Howard is also a character played by Barry Van Dyke in an episode of The New Dick Van Dyke Show.... But now I'm getting silly (unless the naming of the character is some kind of in-joke). Oh, and this 21st Century Seattle band called The Peels is not the Juanita Banana group.

The US Copyright Office shows that in 1990 the copyright of Juanita Banana by Tash Howard & Murray Kenton (Morris Temkin) was transferred to Gary Knight aka Harold Temkin who, as Gary Weston, co-wrote Vacation, the 1962 Connie Francis hit (see BMI repertoires). Further research, anyone?
Thanks to Josef Danksagmüller for Marcello Minerbi version alert.

Only in Oz (8) Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia (1962, 1967)

Another in my series of posts about tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin. See also: Only in Melbourne.

8. Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia
(Roger Roger)
Festival single (Australia) #FK-296 (1962); re-released on FK-1680 (1967)
Australian charts (1962): #8 Sydney #8 Melbourne #16 Brisbane (#26 Australia)

This spaced-out electronic instrumental was familiar in Australia during the 60s as radio filler and as background music on radio and TV. [Listen] I mentioned it in an earlier post as a likely Time-out Instrumental.

Roger Roger (1911-1995) was a prolific French composer for radio, TV and film whose music is often filed these days under Space Age and Library.

Dalilia seems to have started out as a "library" track, a ready-made theme or soundtrack piece, one of numerous tracks Roger Roger composed and recorded for the Chappell Music company's Mood Music series from the mid-50s.

At the time such albums of "stock music" or "background music" were sold to radio and TV stations and film producers, but they are now collected by aficionados of Library Music. Chappell's albums were issued under the label Chappell's Recorded Music Library, established in 1941, so the term "library" has a long history in this context. 

Library Music later became available to the general public through reissues on CD. See, for example, this catalogue from MovieGrooves [archived], which included a Roger Roger collection (Roger Roger is to Library Music what James Bond is to spy movies...). 

[Update, 2020: A lot of library music is now easily accessed on music streaming services. Try, for example, this Spotify playlist of over 1700 tracks from KPM Music.]

Some of Roger Roger's music (SpaceAgePop.com tells us) also fits into a further sub-genre, Test Card, since his work was often heard with test patterns on BBC-TV.

It's possible that the 1962 release of Dalilia as a single was an Australian initiative. The B-side is Cha Cha Charlie, an instrumental by Mel Young, another Chappell library artist.

A US release of the same composition has an altered title, Delilah (1963 on Time). It is either a fresh recording or a remix, with an introduction and some slightly different instrumentation in places [YouTube].

Festival released the single twice, first in December 1962 on #FK-296, when it charted, and again in March 1967 on #FK-1680, again coupled with Mel Young. As I've pointed out previously, one thing Australians loved back then was an instrumental.

The Dalilia tune was used in 1963 for the British TV show The Desperate People, when it was known as The Desperadoes (Theme from Desperate People). Each title is registered to Roger Roger as a separate work at ASCAP, but they do appear to be the same composition. In Australia, The Playboys released a version as Desperado (1965; YouTube).

And the title, Dalilia? The only title resembling Dalilia amongst the hundreds of Roger Roger compositions registered at SACEM (France) is Dalila, the French form of Delilah (the US title). The title Dalilia is, however, registered to Roger Roger at ASCAP, but so is Delila (another form of Delilah/Dalila). I'm wondering whether Dalilia might be an Anglo misprint for Dalila (Delilah).

Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia

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Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.

References: 1. Roger Roger page at SpaceAgePop.com 2. Roger Roger biography at Robert Farnon Society 3. Roger Roger article at French Wikipedia. 4. ASCAP Title Search 5. The Australian Festival Record Company... 1961-1969, label discography by George Crotty 6. Library Music catalogue and Roger Roger blurb from MovieGrooves.com [now defunct]. 7. Composer search at SACEM, the French performing rights organisation.