Soul Music

In this week's Soul Music Marianne Faithfull recalls the French Love song which went on to inspire Elvis's 60's hit, 'I Can't Help Falling in Love with You'. 'Plaisir d'Amour' is the classical French love song which somehow found its way through 18th century orchestration (Hector Berlioz) and 1960's folk revival, to an unexpected re-invention into the Elvis hit 'I Can't' Help Falling in Love with You'. It's been recorded by Marianne Faithfull and busked on the streets of Paris by 'The Gruffalo' author Julia Donaldson. It has also touched the lives of former American Military Academy Freshman Andrew Scott and recently married couple Henry (76) and Christine Wallace (82) who fell in love on a moonlit New Year's Eve. Written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini, Plaisir d'Amour muses on the pleasures and pains of love and was inspired by a poem which appears in Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian's novel 'Célestine'. For 17 year old Marianne Faithfull it was a song of innocence, recorded in a tiny booth in the old D