Deux Amours Redux

In 2002, Madeleine Peyroux – not exactly a French citizen, but from Athens, GA – met harmonica player & multi-instrumentalist William Galison in a bar on Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, NYC, and they began a stormy on and off relationship that didn’t last all-too many moons. Testament to their affair is the extraordinary collaboration Got You on My Mind, released in the late summer of 2004, only a week before the release of Peyroux’s breakthrough album Careless Love, and finally subject of an extended series of lawsuits between the ex-lovers respectively their record labels. It gets even more complicated: Careless Love featured a nice mid-tempo version of the French classic J’ai deux amours, but the better adaptation undoubtedly is the one on Got You on My Mind. Galison in the liner notes: »Josephine Baker made this song a hit in 1930. It speaks of being torn between two beloved homes; her new one in Paris and her old one on ‘La Savanne’ of Africa. Madi, who lives between New York and Paris, changed the word ‘Savanne’ to ‘Manhattan’ and sings of a similar plight.« And even if Madi and Bill finally took the route to Desolation Boulevard, this is heart-shaped heaven, as intimate and infectious as it gets, and chock-full of joie de vivre.

William Galison & Madeleine Peyroux – J’ai deux amours