Joseph Ira Dassin was born in New York City. After his father became a victim of McCarthyism, he and his family moved from place to place across Europe.

After studying at the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in ...

Joseph Ira Dassin was born in New York City. After his father became a victim of McCarthyism, he and his family moved from place to place across Europe.

After studying at the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, Dassin moved back to the United States to go to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After college, he moved back to France where, while working at a radio station, a record label convinced him to begin 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 was also a talented polyglot, recording songs in German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Greek, as well as French and English.

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.