Joe Dassin

Joseph Ira Dassin (November 5, 1938 - August 20, 1980) was a French-speaking American musician. Dassin was born in New York City to Jules Dassin and Béatrice Launer. He began his childhood first in New York and Los Angeles, California. However after his father became a victim of the anti-communist policies of Senator Joseph McCarthy, he and his family moved from place to place across Europe. After studying at Institute Le Rosey in Switzerland, Dassin moved back to the United States to go to college in Ann Arbor, Michigan after doing very well on his baccalauréat exam. After college, he moved back again to France where, while working at a radio station, a record label convinced him to began to record his songs. By the early 1970s, Dassin's songs were on the top of the charts in France and he had become very well known. He died of a heart attack during a vacation to Tahiti on August 20, 1980. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. It's rumored that the heart attack was stimulated by his more-than-occasional usage of drugs.