Joseph Ira Dassin (November 5, 1938 – August 20, 1980) was an American singer-songwriter. He sang in multiple languages but found his greatest successes in France and the French-speaking world. In total, he sold nearly 25 million records worldwide.
Dassin was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Jewish-American parents. His father was film director Jules Dassin and his mother was violinist Béatrice Launer, who studied at the Juilliard School. Both of his parents were mostly of Ukrainian-Jewish extraction from Kamianets-Podilskyi, Sataniv and Buchach.
Dassin lived in New York City and Los Angeles until his father was placed on the Hollywood blacklist in 1950, at which time his family moved to Europe. Between the ages of ten and fifteen Dassin changed schools eleven times. He studied at, among other places, the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, and finished his secondary education in Grenoble. Dassin returned to the United States to attend the University of Michigan from 1957 to 1963, winning an undergraduate Hopwood Award for fiction in 1958 and earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1961 and a Master of Arts in 1963, both in Anthropology.
Moving to France, Dassin worked as a technician for his father and appeared as an actor in supporting roles, among others in three movies directed by his father, including Topkapi (1964) in which he played the role of Josef. He met his future wife Maryse Massiéra in Paris in 1963.
On December 26, 1964, Dassin signed with CBS Records, making him the first French-language singer to be signed with an American record label.
By the early 1970s, Dassin's songs were at the top of the charts in France, and he became immensely popular there. He recorded songs in German, Spanish, Italian, and Greek, as well as French and English. Amongst his most popular songs are "Les Champs-Élysées" (Originally "Waterloo Road") (1969), "Salut les amoureux" (originally "City of New Orleans") (1973), "L'Été indien" (1975), "Et si tu n'existais pas" (1975), and "À toi" (1976).
Dassin married Maryse Massiéra in Paris on January 18, 1966. Their son Joshua was born two and a half months early on September 12, 1973, and died five days later. They divorced in 1977. On January 14, 1978, Dassin married Christine Delvaux in Cotignac, and they had two sons together. Christine died in December 1995.
Dassin died from a heart attack during a vacation to Tahiti on August 20, 1980, aged 41. He was eating lunch with family and friends at the restaurant Chez Michel et Éliane in Papeete when he suddenly slumped in his chair, unconscious. A doctor who was also eating at the restaurant performed CPR on him, but Dassin died at the restaurant. The only ambulance in Papeete was unavailable at the time and took 40 minutes to arrive. His body was returned to the United States and is interred in the Beth Olam section of Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
Source: Article "Joe Dassin" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
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