Trenet is also noted for his work with musicians Michel Emer and Léo Chauliac, with whom he recorded "Y'a d'la joie" (1938) for the first and "La Romance de Paris" (1941) and "Douce France" (1947) for the latter.

"Y'a d'la joie" evokes joy through a series of disconnected images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street, and a baker making excellent bread.

The lovers engaged in a minuet in "Polka du Roi" reveal themselves at length to be "no longer human": they are made of wax and trapped in the Musée Grévin.

Trenet explained in an interview that he was told that "La Mer" was not swing enough to be a hit, and for this reason, it sat in a drawer for three years before it was recorded.

The tune, given unrelated English words and the title "Beyond the Sea" (or sometimes "Sailing"), was a hit for Bobby Darin in the early 1960s, and George Benson in the mid-1980s.

[4] Besides "La Mer", the other Trenet song to receive numerous recordings in English is "Que reste-t-il de nos amours?

"I Wish You Love" was first recorded by Keely Smith in 1957, and since then, by artists that include Frank Sinatra, Blossom Dearie, Sam Cooke, and Dusty Springfield.

[7] When he was age 7, his parents divorced, and he was sent to boarding school in Béziers, but he returned home just a few months later, suffering from typhoid fever.

[8] When Trenet first arrived in Paris in the 1930s, he worked in a movie studio as a props handler and assistant, and later joined the artists in the Montparnasse neighbourhood.

His admiration of the surrealist poet and Catholic mystic Max Jacob (1876–1944) and his love of jazz were two factors that influenced Trenet's songs.

The Charles and Johnny records feature Hess on piano, with the two frequently singing in two-part harmonies with quickly alternating solo spots for the two.

The exuberant "Je chante" gave rise to the notion of Trenet as a "singing vagabond", a theme that appeared in a number of his early songs and films.

He shot to stardom very quickly; as Jean Cocteau put it, when Trenet sang, "He was so young, so fresh that the bar yielded to a rustic decor, the projectors became the stiff branches of a cherry tree, the microphone a hollyhock, the piano a cow.

There he performed at the Folies Bergère or at the Gaîté Parisienne (two famous cabarets) in front of a public often consisting of German officers and soldiers.

During the Épuration légale ("legal purge"), the wave of official trials that followed the Liberation of France and the fall of the Vichy Regime, a court examined whether Trenet was guilty of collaboration.

In 1960, he returned to the Théâtre de l'Étoile, appearing on stage for the first time without the famous trilby hat that long had been part of his act.

On 21 May 1999, he returned to the music scene with his album Les poètes descendent dans la rue (Poets Take to the Streets).

By the autumn of that year, he was well enough to attend the dress rehearsal of Charles Aznavour's show at the Palais des Congrès on 25 October.