La Note Bleue is Nougaro's swan song, his last unfinished symphony and it makes moving not to say mind-blowing listening. For this is not just Nougaro at the end of his life, this is Nougaro at his finest! The final album in the singer's career features some new material, but inevitably it also includes a handful of reworkings of the songs that made him famous – notably a new version of Dansez sur moi (recorded as a duet with David Linx) and an instrumental version of his classic Toulouse positioned as a grand finale.

Nougaro, born in the southern French town of Toulouse in 1929, was reputed to the end as an extraordinary wordsmith, an at times weary and disillusioned entertainer, but a committed passionate jazz fan throughout all his ups and downs. Even before doctors announced his illness, the singer already seemed to be worried about life slipping away through his fingers, once famously singing, "Tant qu'il y aura des hommes, il y aura ("As long as there are men, there'll be…") and repeating the line over and over again without ever finishing his sentence. La Note bleue appears to strike the same note. On this elegant masterpiece of light and shade which Nougaro, fading fast, was forced to leave half unfinished, the singer seems to be present even in his moments of absence.

Whatever its merits, one thing's for sure and that is that La Note bleue finally allows the French singer of "blue words" to have his name engraved on the pediment of the most famous jazz label of all time: Blue Note. What's more, Nougaro plays out in the finest company, wrapping his mellifluous vocals around instruments played by expert jazzmen such as Eric Legnini, Stefano Dibattista and Stéphane Belmondo. What more fitting tribute could there be for the man who devoted his whole life to "making the French language swing"?

The male Piaf

Meanwhile, L'Intégrale studio offers a sweeping panorama of the pugnacious singer's career, beginning as all good stories do at the beginning with Nougaro's début at "Le Lapin Agile" in the mid-50s. He was advised to start there by his father, a professional opera singer whom Nougaro considered as the "one true blues singer." Over the next fifty years, Nougaro went on to experiment with jazz in every imaginable form and L'Intégrale studio follows every twist and turn of his career. All in all, the complete boxed set includes 239 songs (including twelve previously unreleased tracks) which take the listener from Nougaro's recording début in 1959 up to his last studio traces in 2000. The 14 CDs in the collection are accompanied by a DVD, Hombre et Lumière, featuring Nougaro live in concert in Toulouse in 1998. Jazz - the "bear's dance" as his father called it, the "finest style of music" according to the singer who improvised his performances right up until the end – was ever present throughout his career. And, let's not forget, Nougaro was a contemporary of the greatest experts in blue notes: Michel Legrand, Maurice Vander, Aldo Romano, Bernard Lubat, Eddy Louiss (to name but a few!)

Taking into account half a decade's worth of recordings, L'Intégrale studio features the very best and the very worst of Nougaro. The best is undoubtedly at the beginning on the rare - and finally re-released! - album directed by Jimmy Walter and prefaced by Henri Salvador, who also wrote the music for Les Anges (a rock'n'roll style rhythm'n'blues which stands out amongst the other swing rhythms). Even back then in 1959, all the elements which set Nougaro, the "male version of Piaf,"* apart from the crowd were already there in the making. And foremost in these were Nougaro's emphatic phrasing and his inimitable mastery of complex beats. (You only have to listen to Le Cinéma, taken from the volume Du jazz chez les yéyes to appreciate that!) No wonder Nougaro racked up an enviable amount of hits in his career, all of which have gone on to become French classics (from Une petite fille set to music by Michel Legrand to the memorable tribute to his daughter, Cécile ma fille).               

His Jazz Majesty

Jazz is everywhere on L'Intégrale studio, weaving in and out of swing rhythms and Nougaro's unbridled and unbounded lyrics. Fitting then, that one of the two theme albums in the boxed set should be entitled Sa majesté le jazz. The other, Africa Brazil, contains Nougaro's Afro-Brazilian repertoire featuring L'Amour sorcier (recorded as early as 1965), Bidonville, Brésilien (by Gilberto Gil) and Tu verras (Nougaro's famous French reworking of Chico Buarque's O Que Serra). The complete studio works includes all of Nougaro's covers, in fact – and there were many, the "man with soles of swing" recording his own version of everything from Dave Brubeck's A bout de souffle, Sing Sing Song and Armstrong to Gloria (featuring the gloriously languorous vocals of Ornette Coleman). What's more, Nougaro made successful adaptations of the work of the greatest blue note composers including Wayne Shorter, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk and Quincy Jones.

Jazz guides the in-depth visit of La Côte d'Azur in a burst of infectious drums and trumpets, but it is blues that dominates the album Petit Taureau released two years later in 1967. But jazz's syncopated rhythms resurface again on Paris Mai, recorded in 1968, a song which went down in history as Nougaro's own revolutionary protest against "white intelligence and grey religion… crimson anthems, the passion for the future and chronic amnesia!" This was followed, in turn, by an unexpected soul sensuality on La Pluie fait des claquettes. Then Nougaro went on to experiment with an even freer style of jazz on Soeur Ame (his 70s masterpiece misunderstood and overlooked despite the corrosive force of C'est ça la vie).

Thus for the best of Nougaro. And for the worst? The weaker albums begin in 1974 with Recréations, followed by Very Nice with its overpowering 80s jazz (which proved much too heavyweight for the finely-crafted lyrics penned by the nimble "boxer of cinémots"). The worst arrives at its paroxysm with Nougayork and Pacifique. Nougaro once defended these albums, declaring, "It's not Ronsard*, it's American!" but that, it appears, was precisely the problem.

It was not until Embarquement immédiat in 2000 (mixed by Renaud Letang) that Nougaro got back on track, allowing his poetic lyrics to breathe fresher - if not always happier – airs (c.f. L'Ile Hélène). Interestingly enough, this album was marked by the presence of Yvan Cassar, who would eventually be called in to produce La Note bleue, the final album on which Nougaro played out with a final caustic farewell, proclaiming "I feel like writing, but I don't know what/ I walk slowly step by step, arm in arm with my cancer/ It's not so dumb, you know, for someone who claims to be a singer/ To die of a "concert" (cancer) de "pancréateur" (a pun on pancreas)…"

Claude Nougaro La Note bleue (Blue Note/EMI) and L'Intégrale studio (Barclay/Universal) 2004