L’homme dans la lune (MS2011-3222-051)

L’homme dans la lune (MS2011-3222-051)

French language song text from VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3222-051 Eva Lacourse Songbook. Pp. 86-87.

“L’homme dans la lune” [“L’homme dans la lune”; “Si j’étais l’homme dans la lune”] is a transcription of Montreal songwriter, composer, pianist, and recording studio owner/producer Roméo Beaudry’s original song “Si j’étais l’homme dans la lune,” composed around 1927.

Roméo Beaudry (1882-1932) was, along with his friend Herbert Berliner, the most important producer of Canadian artists in the first half of the 20th century. During the 1920s, Beaudry’s Montreal-based Starr studio produced 693 francophone records, featuring almost every great name in Quebec lyric, folk and variety song with equal success. produced songs with original lyrics and melodies as well as French-language translation of popular American hits of the era.

A sheet music edition of this song was published in Montreal in 1927 by Radio Music Publishing Reg’d. That same year, popular Montreal Odilon Rochon recorded Beaudry’s song for the Compo/Starr label (issue # 15329, matrix # E2880). You can hear Rochon’s rendition on Library and Archives Canada’s website, The Virtual Gramophone: “L’homme dans la lune”

Singer imagines how he would freely court all the women he might wish to if women were stars and he was the man in the moon.

VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3222 Eva Lacourse Songbook. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.

L’homme dans la lune

Man in the Moon

Quand je voit la lune

Roméo Beaudry

Roméo Beaudry

1
Quand je voit la lune
Par un ciel d’ete
Promener son disque d’argent
Que de millier d’etoile semblent guette
Je me dit en les regardant

Refrain
Si les etoiles etais des femmes
Et si j’etais l’homme dans la lune
Je passerai mes nuits
A courtiser sans bruits
Tantot la blonde
Tantot la brune
Et j’aurrai le choix
De tout ces beau minois
Sans craindre qu’on m’en prenne une
Si les etoiles etais des femmes
Et si j’etais l’homme dans la lune

2
Ah! Que de jalousie je ferai la haut
Toute m’en dirais mes faveurs
Que de gout celeste don’t
J’eus en nouveau
Je glisserais de coeur en coeur

Fin refrain