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

songwriter A songwriter is a person who creates 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 genre and film scoring. ...

, actor, and

folklorist Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

from

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

. He helped popularize

French Canadian French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French people, French colonists first arriving in Canada (New France), France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of ...

folk music in Canada.

Life

Gauthier was born in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

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 to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...

, 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 comics illustrators/artists in that they produce both the litera ...

, director of

silent movies A silent film is a film without 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, wh ...

, 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 o ...

's comic opera '' Les cloches de Corneville'' (''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 a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The g ...

s for

Victor Talking Machine Company The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer, incorporated in 1901. Victor was an independent enterprise until 1929 when it was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and became ...

and

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

. He recorded more than 100 songs and

monologues In theatre, a monologue (also known as monolog in North American English) (in , from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character (arts), character, most often to expres ...

, 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 an 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 and was originally the cultural centre of the Sai ...

theatre in

. 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-stage-actor-stub