France Joli - Teen Stardom

Teen Stardom

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Joli grew up in the suburb of Dorion. Her father was a hardware merchant and her mother was a teacher.

As early as age four, Joli was performing for relatives lip-synching to Barbra Streisand records while handling a skipping rope like a microphone; she had appeared on television by age six. At age 11, Joli left the public school system (her mother tutored her) to concentrate on her performing career appearing regularly in television commercials and talent shows. A mutual acquaintance suggested Joli meet up with musician Tony Green who Joli approached backstage after he'd given a concert, Joli inviting Green to be her record producer. Green didn't take the 13-year-old Joli seriously: he'd recall: "To get rid of her I her to keep in touch." According to one source Joli eventually visited Green's home to sing for him; it's also reported that Green first heard Joli sing from the audience of an "end of school year show" in which she performed in the fall of 1978. Both accounts concur that Green first heard Joli singing along with a Streisand record. Green had written the song "Come to Me" for Joli by the next day.

When the producer Green originally commissioned to record Joli indicated a desire to develop Joli as a Francophone singer, Green himself took over production duties for Joli. The tracks Joli cut with Green were picked up by Prelude and released on April 17, 1979 as the album France Joli: the track "Come to Me" received a boost when Joli performed it as a last-minute replacement for Donna Summer at a concert held on Fire Island on July 7, 1979 before an estimated audience of 5000.

"Come to Me" began a three-week reign atop the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play on 22 September 1979 and the France Joli album rose to #26. On the Billboard Hot 100 "Come to Me" peaked at #15 a symptom of the increasing disenchantment of pop radio with disco music.

Joli made her network television debut on 26 October 1979 broadcast of the Midnight Special and she co-hosted the 7 December episode. Her other TV credits included episodes of the talk shows of Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore and also a Bob Hope special.

1980 saw the release of Joli's second album Tonight with the ballad "This Time (I'm Giving All I've Got)" released as a single bubbling under for two weeks pk #103: this attempt to curry favor in the mainstream market was unsuccessful with Joli receiving support only in the dance club market where the tracks "The Heart to Break the Heart" and "Feel Like Dancing" achieved a joint position of #3: Tonight was ranked on the Billboard album chart at #175.

In 1981 Joli's third album Now - produced by Ray Reid and William Anderson from Crown Heights Affair rather than Tony Green1 - failed to generate even a low chart placing, success apparent only in another dance club smash with the track "Gonna Get Over You", which went to number two for two weeks on the American dance charts. However Joli, as evidenced by her opening for the Commodores during their American tour of 1981, was still viewed as having star potential: she departed the dance music-oriented Prelude label for mainstream music giant Epic. Prelude owner Marvin Schlachter would say of Joli: "She was a very beautiful young lady and she had a sort of magnetic appeal, which quite frankly was appealing to everybody, but in a manor of speaking - the talent was...the people behind her directed her career. When she felt that she wanted to rise above the Disco market and left Prelude to sign with Columbia - her career disappeared. Because again, the talent was in the producers and the writers and so on. She again, was an instrument of their creativity."

• 1The track: "Your Good Lovin'" was arranged and produced by Prelude regulars Eric Matthew and Darryl Payne.
• 2"Gonna Get Over You" reached #43 on the French Pop charts