Claude François, born February 1, 1939 in Ismaïlia, Egypt; died March 11, 1978 in Paris, France, was a pop music singer.

The son of an Italian mother and a French father, Claude François was born in Egypt when his father, Aimé François, was working there as a shipping traffic controller on the Suez Canal. In 1951 the job took them to the city of Port Tawfik on the Red Sea.

Claude François' mother was very musical and had her son take piano and violin lessons while on his own, he learned to play the drums. As a result of the 1956 Suez Crisis, the family returned to live in Monte Carlo where they struggled financially when Claude's father fell ill and could not work. A young Claude found a job as a bank clerk and at night earned extra money playing drums with an orchestra at the luxury hotels along the French Riviera. He had a good but untested singing voice but was offered a chance to sing at a hotel in the fashionable Mediterranean resort town of Juan-les-Pins. His show gained good audience acceptance and eventually he began to perform at the glamorous night-clubs along the Côte d'Azur. While working the clubs he met Janet Woolcoot, an English dancer whom he married in 1960.

Ambitious, Claude François' moved to Paris where there were many more opportunities to expand his career. At the time, American Rock and Roll was taking hold in France and he took a job as part of a singing group in order to make a living. With the goal to eventually make it as a solo act, he paid the cost to record a 45rpm. Trying to capitalize on the American dance craze, "The Twist", Claude François recorded a song titled "Nabout Twist" that proved a resounding failure. Undaunted, in 1962 he recorded a cover version in French of an Everly Brothers song, "Made To Love" (aka Girls Girls Girls). Written by Phil Everly, it had been only a minor hit in America, but Claude François' rendition titled "Belles Belles Belles", rocked to the top of the French charts, selling close to two million copies and making him an overnight star.

Under a new manager, Claude François' career continued to blossom. He followed the first success with another French adaptation of an American song. This time, doing Trini Lopez's "If I Had a Hammer" in French as "Si j'avais un marteau." Capitalizing on his blond good looks, he mimicked Elvis Presley's stage style as well as the slicked-back hair. Performing in sequined suits, François gave high-energy stage performances that had hordes of adoring teenage fans racing to the music shops to purchase his latest record or lining up to buy a ticket for his shows. In 1964 he headlined at the Paris Olympia, a sign that he had arrived.

A dedicated professional, Claude François worked hard to achieve success producing a string of massively popular hit songs and touring constantly. With the onslaught of Beatlemania, he covered their hits in French, adjusted the hair style a little and kept his success moving ahead. But, his talent extended beyond copying the works others had made famous and he wrote songs for himself and displayed a melodic voice doing romantic ballads.

In 1966, François created a complete new stage act using four female dancers as backup. Named "Les Clodettes," the sexy girls danced in the background while François did his own energetic work center stage. In a return to the Paris Olympia he added eight musicians and a full orchestra to his backup dancers, putting on a spectacular show that filled every seat in the large theater and left fans standing in the street for lack of tickets.

Divorced from his wife, in 1967 he began a relationship with France Gall, another famous French singer. Their affair was short lived and he soon met Isabelle Forêt with whom he had two sons in two years. Flushed with enormous success and confidence, he established his own record company. In 1968, he and Jacques Revaux wrote a song in French called "Comme d'habitude" that Canadian singing star Paul Anka reworked into the now legendary hit most famously sung by Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra as "My Way". Although Claude François continued his successful formula of adapting English and American rock and roll hits for the French market, by the 1970s the market had changed and the Disco craze that swept North America took root in France. For the versatile François, this was not a problem. He simply re-invented himself as the king of French disco recording "La plus belle des choses," a French version of a Bee Gees hit record.

He worked non-stop, touring across Europe, Africa and at major venues in Quebec in Canada. However, his work load caught up with him in 1971 when he collapsed on stage from exhaustion. After a brief period off, he returned to the recording studios, releasing several best-selling hits throughout the early 1970s. He expanded from owing his own record company to acquiring a celebrity magazine and a modeling agency. Although driven to achieve financial success, in 1974, he organized a concert to raise funds for a charity for handicapped children and the following year he participated in a Paris concert to raise funds for medical research. By the mid 1970s he was single again, dating several well known European stars. He continued to perform while overseeing his numerous business interests. In 1975, while in London he narrowly escaped death when an IRA bomb exploded and two years later a fanatic tried to shoot him. In 1977 and 1978, more than 15 years after his first hit record, he was still topping the musical charts with multi-million sells like "Alexandrie Alexandra" and performing to large audiences.

After working in Switzerland, on Saturday, March 11, 1978 he returned to his Paris apartment in order to appear the next day on "Rendez-vous du Dimanche" with TV host Michel Drucker. While taking a bath, he was accidentally electrocuted when he touched an electric light while standing in the water. At only 39-years of age, his early death brought a wave of public empathy for a national star.

Claude François owned a home near the village of Dannemois in the Essonne departement about 35 miles south of Paris. It was a place where he liked to escape to relax in the quiet countryside and it was there that he was interred in the local cemetery.

On March 11, 2000, on the 20th anniversary of his death, Place Claude-François in Paris was named in his memory.

External link

• Claude Francois biography (http://www.rfimusique.com/siteEn/biographie/biographie_6147.asp)

Adapted from the article Claude François (http://wikinfo.org/wiki.phtml?title=Claude_Fran%E7ois) from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.fr:Claude François nl:Claude François