Madelaine – Sister Adele Dominique-Ten Other Songs Sung By Madelaine (1963)

• Posted on June 15, 2009 at 6:15 pm

(Updated 12/21/09) I’ve been neglecting my album blog lately due to a masters program that’s kicking my backside, but this update was long overdue.  A reader named Greg contacted me to let me know that this album was actually put out by a folk singer named Madelaine who was covering the songs of Sister Adele Dominique.  The album cover should have been self-explanatory but in the course of digging up information on Sister Adele, I became confused and thought that this was actually one of her records.  Personally I think Madelaine has a beautiful voice and now I’ll definitely have to find Sister Adele’s record in order to compare the two of them.  I’ll leave you with the information that I did find regarding Sister Adele as her story is fascinating.  In the mean time, please enjoy the sounds of Madelaine.

In the 60′s, Sister Adele Dominique was known as Sister Luc-Gabrielle or Soeur Sourirw. She had a number one hit with the song “Dominique” back in 1963.   Sister Luc-Gabrielle’s story is a tragic one and the information that I’ve included is from a biography by Gregory McIntosh of the All Music Guide.  I was so fascinated with her story that I’m just going to include Mr. McIntosh’s article verbatim as my summary wouldn’t do it justice.

Belgian singer/songwriter/guitarist Soeur Sourire, known in the English-speaking world as the Singing Nun, was born Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers in Brussels on October 17, 1933, where she was also raised. She attended the University of Louvain and became an art teacher before joining the Dominican order in 1954 under whose service she would eventually trade her name, Jeannine Deckers, for Sister Luc-Gabrielle, a name derived from her parents’ names: Lucien and Gabrielle. While in the convent, Sister Luc-Gabrielle penned a number of tunes and with the support of her fellow nuns, she booked some time at the Phillips recording studio with the intent of giving away her songs as part of their missionary work, but upon hearing the recordings, Phillips offered Sister Luc-Gabrielle a contract and dubbed her Soeur Sourire (‘ Sister Smile’ ).

The commercial appeal Phillips saw in Soeur Sourire was shared by Europe when her first single, an homage to St. Dominic titled “Dominique”, dominated the charts in 1963. In fact, it did so well that Phillips released the single in the States. Upon its release, “Dominique” rose the U.S. charts and hit number one, marking Soeur Sourire (known in the U.S. as the Singing Nun) as the only Belgian to hit number one in the U.S. “Dominique” sold so well that it stayed at the top of the charts for ten weeks, kept “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen from reaching the top, at one point outsold Elvis Presley, and even led to a taped appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The success of “Dominique” led to a 1965 Hollywood musical titled The Singing Nun, very loosely based on Soeur Sourire, starring Debbie Reynolds and Chad Everett. But her sudden fame was more than she could handle, and in 1965 Soeur Sourire left the limelight for the shelter of the convent. After only one year away from music, however, Soeur Sourire announced her plans to leave the convent and resume her life as a musician, dropping the name Soeur Sourire (which she had always used reluctantly) and adopting yet another moniker, Luc Dominique. She used her given name, Jeannine Deckers when offstage. At this point, Deckers reunited with a close friend from her college days, Annie Pescher, and shocked her followers with her political song in favor of birth control, “Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill”. She further alienated supporters by embracing radical stances and by her openly gay lifestyle with Prescher. Deckers and Prescher later opened a school for autistic children which they ran together through the ’70s, but in the early ‘ 80s, the Belgium government informed Deckers that she owed over $60,000 in taxes on the profits of “Dominique”. Since Deckers had donated all of the earnings from “Dominique” to her convent, she had no money to pay the fee. She became addicted to alcohol and pills, and played shows to try and pay off her debt, but when the government threatened to close the school, Deckers and Prescher wrote letters to their family and friends, then committed suicide together on March 29, 1985 via a mixture of barbiturates and alcohol. ~ Gregory McIntosh, All Music Guide

The more I read about Sister Adele Dominique, the more surprised I became that I had never heard the story of the Singing Nun.  That’s the fun of writing a blog like this though.  You end up learning a lot about people who probably deserve to be better known than they are.  Lastly, yes I do see the irony of writing about a nun in a blog called “Vinyl from Hell”.  Sister Adele would probably understand that the the blog name is tongue in cheek and hopefully you do too.

Here’s a 1963 article from Time Magazine.  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873185,00.html

Tracks:

Side One

• 01_01 – Sister Adele
• 01_02 – Sue le pont d Avignon
• 01_03 – Il pluet. il pluet bergere
• 01_04 – Savez-vous planter les choux?
• 01_05 – Il e tait un bergere
• 01_06 – Sainte Nuite

Side Two

• 02_01 – Dominique
• 02_02 – Fais dodo, colas, mon p\’tit frere
• 02_03 – Dou viens-tu, bergere
• 02_04 – Amaryllis
• 02_05 – Au clair de la lune
• 02_06 – Alouette, Gentile Alouette

Continue reading Madelaine – Sister Adele Dominique-Ten Other Songs Sung By Madelaine (1963)

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  • Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers,
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