Newsletter: XALO Records Launches to Release the Long-Lost 1964 Recordings of French Singer Jacqi Blanchon

[THIS IS A PRESS RELEASE]

XALO Records announced its public launch and the forthcoming release of long-lost orchestral recordings by French singer Jacqi Blanchon, recorded in 1964 and believed lost for six decades before being rediscovered and restored over a ten-year effort by her grandson, the musician and filmmaker Talain. The label's founding collection of 3,333 numbered editions is available for preorder now at xalorecords.com, with the first pressing shipping this fall.

In 1956, Édith Piaf performed in the Grand Cercle room of the Casino de Charbonnières, outside Lyon. A photograph survives from that night, inscribed and dated: a souvenir given to Jacqi Blanchon by Geo Mouquet, the casino's orchestra leader. Eight years later, Jacqi stepped into a studio and recorded a full orchestral album of her own.

It was never released. The tapes disappeared.

The restoration began with a letter from a French record collector, whose discovery set off the search that brought the tapes back.

"I spent ten years chasing her voice," said Talain, founder of XALO Records. "Every family has one: a voice that went unheard. Hers is where this label begins."

The collection is one-time-only: each edition grants a permanent, numbered place in the label's founding archive, three generations of one family's music, rediscovered and restored.

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