14/08/2026
Moochin' About new release...
Black Trombone
by Serge Gainsbourg avec Alain Goraguer https://moochinaboutltd.bandcamp.com/album/black-trombone
A definitive new collection celebrating the birth of a legend...
Moochin' About is proud to announce a landmark new collection dedicated to one of the most quietly revolutionary partnerships in post-war French music: the collaboration between Serge Gainsbourg and arranger, pianist and composer Alain Goraguer. Spanning the crucial years 1958 to 1963, this release gathers the albums, EPs and film scores that forged Gainsbourg’s early artistic identity and established Goraguer as the indispensable architect of his sound. Featured here are the complete classic albums Du Chant à la Une!, L’Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg and N°4, together with the essential soundtrack EPs Les Loups dans la Bergerie and L’Eau à la Bouche, plus related material from the same golden period...
This is not simply a reissue. It is a carefully curated portrait of the moment when French chanson met modern jazz, Latin rhythms and cinematic atmosphere, creating something entirely new. For collectors, long-time admirers and those discovering Gainsbourg for the first time, this Moochin About collection offers the purest distillation of his most elegant, inventive and unjustly under-appreciated early work.
The Meeting of Two Minds
In the late 1950s Paris was alive with possibility. Jazz clubs on the Left Bank, cabarets on the Right, and a new generation of songwriters determined to drag French popular song out of the shadows of the music-hall tradition. Into this world stepped Serge Gainsbourg — still Lucien Ginsburg to some, a former art student and cabaret pianist with a voice that was more spoken than sung, and a lyrical gift that mixed black humour, eroticism and classical allusion. He needed a musical partner who could translate those ideas into sound...
He found him in Alain Goraguer. Born in 1931, Goraguer was a classically trained pianist who had fallen hard for American jazz. By the mid-1950s he was already working with Boris Vian, writing and arranging songs that mixed satire, swing and sophisticated harmony. When he first collaborated with Gainsbourg on the 1958 sessions that became Du Chant à la Une!, something clicked immediately. Goraguer understood that Gainsbourg’s melodies, often skeletal and full of space, demanded arrangements that were both elegant and slightly off-kilter. He brought in the finest Parisian jazz musicians — the likes of Pierre Michelot or Paul Rovère on bass, Christian Garros on drums, Michel Hausser on vibraphone — and clothed Gainsbourg’s songs in cool piano voicings, smoky brass, light Latin percussion and unexpected instrumental colours. The result was a sound that belonged neither fully to traditional chanson nor to pure jazz, but occupied a new territory somewhere between the two...
Goraguer was far more than a hired hand. On several key tracks he co-composed the music, and his orchestrations were so integral that the records would be unthinkable without him. For roughly six years the two men worked in near-symbiosis, producing a body of work that still sounds startlingly fresh more than six decades later.
Du Chant à la Une! (1958) — The Spark
Gainsbourg’s debut album opens the collection. Recorded at Studio Blanqui in the summer of 1958 and released that September, Du Chant à la Une! was a commercial flop at the time, yet it won the Grand Prix of the Académie Charles Cros and earned the high praise of Boris Vian, who compared Gainsbourg to Cole Porter. Listening today, it is easy to hear why...
The album is a masterclass in concise, witty songwriting. “Le Poinçonneur des Lilas” remains one of Gainsbourg’s most perfect early creations: a portrait of a Métro ticket-puncher driven to existential despair by the monotony of his job, delivered over a swinging, slightly melancholy arrangement that lets the vibraphone and piano breathe. “Ce Mortel Ennui” floats on a lazy, almost cynical groove. “Du Jazz dans le Ravin” — a surreal tale of a car crash told with cool detachment — features brilliant vibraphone work and two short but telling solos. “Charleston des Déménageurs de Piano” is pure playful invention, while “L’Alcool” stretches out into darker, more introspective territory.
Throughout, Goraguer’s arrangements are models of restraint and colour. There are no heavy strings, no bombastic climaxes — just light, precise, jazz-inflected settings that leave space for Gainsbourg’s distinctive, half-spoken delivery. This is the sound of a new voice finding its first true expression.
Les Loups dans la Bergerie and L’Eau à la Bouche — Cinema and Desire
By 1959–1960 Gainsbourg and Goraguer had begun writing for the screen. Two of their earliest and most evocative film scores form a central part of this collection.
Les Loups dans la Bergerie (1959/60), the soundtrack EP for Hervé Bromberger’s film, is pure atmosphere. The “Générique” sets a tense, shadowy mood with muted brass and nervous piano. “Fugue” is a brief, elegant chase piece. The title track and its reprise build a sense of lurking danger, while “Cha-Cha-Cha du Loup” injects a sly, rhythmic humour. Co-composed by Gainsbourg and Goraguer, the music already shows the pair’s gift for translating narrative into sound without ever becoming merely illustrative...
Even more celebrated is L’Eau à la Bouche (1960), the score for Jacques Doniol-Valcroze’s film. The title song is a masterpiece of sensual restraint. Goraguer takes a Cuban bolero rhythm and slows it almost to a crawl, stretching the instrumental introduction into a long, languid statement before Gainsbourg’s voice enters with lyrics that are pure erotic suggestion. “Black March”, “Angoisse” and “Judith” complete a suite of pieces that move between tension, melancholy and quiet desire. These recordings remain among the most atmospheric and influential early French film scores of their era, and they established Gainsbourg as a composer for cinema long before his later, better-known soundtrack work.
L’Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg (1961) — Literary Ambition
Gainsbourg’s third album, often referred to as N°3, finds him stretching further into literary territory while Goraguer continues to refine the jazz-chanson hybrid. “La Chanson de Prévert” is the standout: a setting of lines inspired by Jacques Prévert’s “Les Feuilles Mortes”, given a wistful, floating arrangement that lets Gainsbourg’s voice float over gentle piano and strings of the lightest touch. “Les Amours Perdues” is pure melancholic elegance. “Les Femmes, c’est du Chinois” is one of the few tracks on which Goraguer is officially credited as co-composer of the music, and it swings with a playful, slightly mocking energy. Elsewhere Gainsbourg adapts texts by Gérard de Nerval, Victor Hugo and Félix Arvers, turning high literature into sophisticated popular song without ever losing his own sardonic voice.
The album as a whole feels more confident and expansive than the debut. Goraguer’s orchestrations have grown richer yet remain transparent; the musicianship is of the highest order. It is the sound of an artist beginning to realise the full scope of his talent...
N°4 (1962) — Expanding the Palette
By 1962 Gainsbourg was experimenting more freely with rhythm and texture. N°4 (sometimes titled Serge Gainsbourg N°4) incorporates Latin influences, early rock and twist rhythms, and a darker, more nocturnal atmosphere. “Black Trombone” is a cool, late-night meditation with a memorably bluesy edge. “Intoxicated Man” is pure Gainsbourg: witty, slightly self-destructive, and perfectly framed by Goraguer’s arrangement. “Les Goémons” and “Les Cigarillos” show his gift for the unexpected image. “Requiem pour un Twisteur” plays with the twist craze while keeping a knowing distance. “Baudelaire” sets the poet’s words to music with characteristic elegance, and “Ce Grand Méchant Vous” (with additional lyrics by Francis Claude) closes the album on a note of sly menace...
This is the last of Gainsbourg’s early albums in the classic Goraguer style before the more radical experiments of Confidentiel and Gainsbourg Percussions. It captures the partnership at a peak of inventive ease, still rooted in jazz but already looking toward the broader palette that would define Gainsbourg’s later career.
The years 1958–1963 remain the least fully appreciated chapter of Gainsbourg’s discography for many listeners outside France. The later scandals, the duets with Bardot and Birkin, the reggae experiments and the concept albums have tended to overshadow these elegant, witty, beautifully crafted early records. Yet without them, the rest of the story is incomplete. Here is where the voice was formed, where the lyrical style was refined, and where the partnership with Alain Goraguer created a sonic world that was entirely original...
Goraguer’s contribution cannot be overstated. He was the man who gave Gainsbourg’s songs their first true musical identity — cool without being cold, sophisticated without being pretentious, and always full of unexpected colour. The arrangements on these records still sound modern: light, precise, full of space and subtle rhythmic invention. Listening to them is a reminder that French popular music of this period could be as adventurous and as refined as anything coming out of New York or London...
Moochin About has long specialised in rescuing and presenting the finest jazz, film and instrumental music of the mid-twentieth century with care and respect. This new collection continues that tradition. Drawn from the original Philips masters and presented with the attention to detail that the label’s followers have come to expect, it offers the definitive survey of Gainsbourg and Goraguer’s formative collaboration...
Whether you are a dedicated Gainsbourg collector seeking the purest early material, a jazz enthusiast drawn to Goraguer’s brilliant arranging, a film-score aficionado hunting for the roots of French cinematic music, or simply a listener hungry for songs that combine intelligence, humour, sensuality and musical invention, this collection belongs in your library...
