Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris

(Original cast of off-Broadway show: Columbia D2S-779). Brel’s sardonic French songs retain a great deal of their point and wit when adapted into English for an offBroadway revue. In fact they’re even sharpened a bit by such devices as altering “Verdun” to “Saigon” in a commentary on the brutality of war. Even better than these English adaptations, though, are Brel’s own French versions, sung by himself on Reprise 6246.