Conrad Gauthier (8 August 1885 – 14 February 1964) was a Canadian singer,

songwriter A songwriter is a musician who professionally composes musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music gen ...

, actor, and

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

from

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. He helped popularize

French Canadian French Canadians (referred to as Canadiens mainly before the twentieth century; french: Canadiens français, ; feminine form: , ), or Franco-Canadians (french: Franco-Canadiens), refers to either an ethnic group who trace their ancestry to Fren ...

folk music in Canada.

Life

Gauthier was born in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

on 8 August 1885. After some commercial training, Gauthier worked in

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

, founding in 1902 the Cercle du Drapeau and later the Cercle Lapierre. He was a member of the Association dramatique de Montréal and the Anciens du Gesù company. In turn printer, editor,

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

, director of

silent movies A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

, journalist, accountant, and municipal officer, Gauthier made his name in Canada and the United States as an actor and amateur singer. He played Gaspard in

Robert Planquette Jean Robert Planquette (31 July 1848 – 28 January 1903) was a French composer of songs and operettas. Several of Planquette's operettas were extraordinarily successful in Britain, especially ''Les cloches de Corneville'' (1878), the length of ...

's comic opera ''

Les cloches de Corneville ''Les cloches de Corneville'' (''The Bells of Corneville'', sometimes known in English as ''The Chimes of Normandy'') is an opéra-comique in three acts, composed by Robert Planquette to a libretto by Clairville (Louis-François Nicolaïe), Loui ...

'' (''The Chimes of Normandy''), with the Société Canadienne d'Opérette. In the early 1920s, Gauthier was a pioneer in radio and in the recording of Quebec folk music, making 78 speed

phonograph record A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...

s for

Victor Talking Machine Company The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer that operated independently from 1901 until 1929, when it was acquired by the Radio Corporation of America and subsequently operated as a subsidia ...

and

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

. He recorded more than 100 songs and

monologues In theatre, a monologue (from el, μονόλογος, from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes a ...

, often with Elzéar Hamel. Gauthier created the ''Veillées du bon vieux temps'' concert presentations, which he produced from 1921 until 1941 at the

Monument-National The Monument-National is a historic Canadian theatre located at 1182 Saint Laurent Boulevard in Montreal, Quebec. With a capacity of over 1,600 seats, the venue was erected between 1891 and 1894 and was originally the cultural centre of the Sain ...

theatre in Montreal. Gauthier's ''40 Chansons d'autrefois'' (Thérien Frères 1930, 1932) and ''40 Autres Chansons d'autrefois'' (Archambault 1947) were combined in the collection ''Dans tous les cantons'' (Archambault 1963). In the preface to ''40 Chansons d'autrefois'' Gauthier was described by Gustave Comte as a 'keen re-creator of our old customs' and an 'irresistible dispenser of good old-fashioned happiness'. Conrad Gauthier died in Montreal on 14 February 1964.

Songs

* Les pieds de ma soeur * Vieillir c'est souffrir * Mon chapeau de paille * Le bedeau de St David

References

1885 births 1964 deaths Musicians from Montreal 20th-century Canadian male singers Burials at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery {{Canada-actor-stub