Jenny Rock: ‘Le Train Pour Memphis’ and the forgotten world of French-Canadian soul
Soul music represented the infallible quality and defiance of Black artists in America during the mid-20th century. Blending elements of gospel with the infectious groove of R&B, cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia became havens of soul during the 1950s and 1960s, with labels like Motown Records launching a plethora of stars and demonstrating Black excellence during a period of intense discrimination and racism within the United States. Soon, soul music spread across the globe, enrapturing audiences everywhere with its beating rhythm.
Perhaps as a result of their power within the pop charts, discussions around 1960s soul often centre around labels like Motown, Stax, and Atlantic, and their incredible roster of artists – Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and Otis Redding, to name only a few. It is important to remember, however, that soul’s popularity certainly was not limited to the 50 states. In the UK, entire subcultures were born from amphetamine-fueled all-night dances, with the nation’s youth hooked on the ‘Motown sound’. Even the sun-soaked streets of Rome, Italy, had their own soul scene thanks to expat American artists like Rocky Roberts.
The same is true of America’s neighbours to the north, Canada. Although Canadian soul didn’t produce nearly as many stars as the States, cities like Toronto did play host to a particularly productive scene, dominated by the likes of Jackie Shane, who spent the majority of her career in Canada despite being born in Tennessee. Canadian soul was much more obscure than the music being released by Motown and Stax, but French Canadian soul took that obscurity to entirely new levels.
Arising from the province of Québec, French Canadian soul music was largely ignored by the majority of English-speaking listeners both in the region and further afield. The French language has always proven itself to be commanding within pop, but the Québec dialect, in addition to the colossal acclaim and success of their American counterparts, few – if any – French Canadian artists managed to establish themselves within the global soul scene.
Despite this lack of attention, the scene in Québec produced some truly groundbreaking records and artists. Among them was Jenny Rock, the stage name of Janine de Bellefeuille, who emerged from the region during the mid-1960s. The vast majority of Rock’s repertoire consisted of French cover versions of popular English-language tracks, including versions of Johnny Thunder’s ‘Everybody Do The Sloopy’ and the R&B classic ‘Shake A Tail Feather’.
Rock’s work didn’t garner much attention in the Canadian mainstream, although her adoption of R&B and French yé-yé helped provide a sense of identity to young people in the French-speaking region of Canada. However, her greatest work arrived when she adopted the sounds of soul. The 1967 single ‘Le Contrat D’Amour’, released by Denis Pantis’ Citation imprint, is a fairly standard R&B track attempting to capitalise on the sound of Motown, but the real magic occurs on the record’s B-side.
Rufus Thomas was one of the biggest stars on the Stax label, and his knack for writing captivating R&B anthems was seemingly universal. So, in 1967, Rock adapted his work ‘The Memphis Train’ to become ‘Le Train Pour Memphis’—bizarrely, Thomas’ English-language original was not released by Stax until the following year. Her youthful voice and unwavering energy breathed new life into the song, completely transforming its quality and creating a true soul floor-filler in the process.
Jenny Rock might never have achieved the same soul stardom as Rufus Thomas or any of the other artists contained on the Stax label, but her work remains a stunning insight into the global power of soul and R&B music during the mid-1960s. What’s more, works like ‘Le Train Pour Memphis’ have since taken on a life of their own, coveted and sought-after by dedicated soul fans for their original and compelling quality.
