The album received critical acclaim and elevated lead singer and composer Willy DeVille to star status.

Instead of Jack Nitzsche, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Steve Douglas, another associate of Phil Spector, served as producer.

In Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus, Alex Halberstadt wrote about Le Chat Bleu: (Willy DeVille) created a record that sounded like nothing that had come before...

Thinking they'd signed a new wave band, Capitol didn't know what to do with Willy's rock and roll chanson and shelved it for a year.

When it was finally released in 1980, Le Chat Bleu, remixed by Joel Dorn, made nearly every critic's list of the year's best records.

I don't know how Steve came to the impression that Ronnie and I would fit in this scenario, but I have to say that the end result, Le Chat Bleu, is one of my favorite rock albums of all time... Willy's songs had a heavy Hispanic influence as well as a hint of Cajun music.

"[6] Reported Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone: Despite DeVille's indisputable chops, Capitol was less than elated when he elected to cut Le Chat Bleu in Paris... And when Willy DeVille returned—many thousands of dollars later—bearing a record sprinkled with Cajun-style accordions and washboards, an unseemly number of ballads and vivid string arrangements by Jean-Claude Petit (who once worked with celebrated French chanteuse Edith Piaf), the label was flabbergasted, refused to release the album and dropped the artist.

Burgeoning import sales finally forced Capitol to change its mind, but with DeVille now signed to Atlantic, Le Chat Bleu is probably a dead issue.

"[8]For the American release of Le Chat Bleu, Capitol substituted "Turn You Every Way but Loose", a rocker, for "Mazurka", a zydeco song written by Queen Ida.

[11] Critic Robert Christgau, who had previously called DeVille "the songpoet of greaser nostalgia," did not care for Le Chat Bleu.

He wrote sarcastically about the album, "Goils — they break your heart, run off with your coke, mess up your drug deals, and take your count when you go to the blood bank.

"[10] Neil McCormick, a music critic for The Daily Telegraph, wrote about the album 29 years after its release, "Whenever I am taken with one of those bouts of nostalgia where I am compelled to sit and flick through my old vinyl, there's a very high chance that Le Chat Bleu will wind up on my stereo.