Eric Blau, at 87; poet created 'Jacques Brel'

ERIC BLAU (Courtesy of Blau Family)

NEW YORK - Eric Blau, who transformed his infatuation with the songs of a Belgian-born troubadour into one of off-Broadway's most enduring hits, "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," died Feb. 17 in Manhattan. He was 87 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was pneumonia after a stroke, said his son Matthew, of Brattleboro, Vt.

Mr. Blau had been a poet, a children's television producer, a ghostwriter, and an editor of a communist literary magazine before he and the composer Mort Shuman conceived "Jacques Brel," an evening's worth of the singer's wistful-sardonic, witty-bitter, hopeful-fatalistic pop songs. The two men translated Brel's lyrics into English and added connective material.

The result, performed by a cast of four (including Shuman and Mr. Blau's wife, Elly Stone), was a song cycle that, with a kind of spontaneous alchemy, became more theatrical than musical. Its original production, which opened at the Village Gate in early 1968, ran more than four years and engendered hundreds, if not thousands of productions in professional and amateur theaters all over the world.

Milton Eric Blau was born in Bridgeport, Conn., the son of immigrants from Hungary who lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father drove a New York City taxicab for 50 years.

Mr. Blau was at one point a ghostwriter for instructional pamphlets ostensibly written by sports stars such as Roger Maris and Bob Cousy, and with the cartoonist Roy Doty he created "The Adventures of Danny Dee," an early children's show that featured rudimentary animation.

According to Stone, she and her husband, whom she married in 1962, were introduced to Brel's music by a friend who worked for a record company.

"And I was so struck with it that I asked Eric to translate the songs into English," she said.

The first of these appeared in a musical revue called "O, Oysters!"