Claude Francois French Singer.

Claude Francois was a great French Singer/songwriter who was very popular in France and southern Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. He never gained the popularity he deserved in the English speaking countries, which was a great loss to those lands because this guy was extremely talented. Some of the songs we have heard sung by Brit or American artists and other English speaking nations were written by Claude Francois - although many of us are ignorant of this fact.

He was born in Egypt in 1939 to a French father and Italian mother. His father worked as an administrator on the Suez canal. The Francois family moved back to France during the Suez crisis and took up residence in Marseilles. 

Claude Francois played drums in various bands at the hotels of the town to supplement the wages of his daytime employment. His father had become too ill to work. It also became apparent that he could sing and it was from this moment that his life began to change.

He quickly became popular in Europe and the first and only time I remember seeing him, on television, was when he came to England and did a French song on the Russel Harty show. He sang and danced with a group of glamorous and scantily clad ladies, before being interviewed by Russel Harty - this was in 1977. In 1978 he was electrocuted and killed in a freak accident when he was in the bath and tried to adjust a light bulb. He was just 39 years of age.