Pierre Perret

He spent a long part of his childhood in the café which his parents owned, where he learned to work with jargon and slang. At the age of 14 he signed up to the conservatoire de musique de Toulouse and to a dramatic arts institute. But he wasn't admitted to the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris because he had some problems with military justice during his military service. In the meantime, he set up his first band of four musicians in his own name, with whom he played at events throughout the region. In 1957, he was snapped up by Eddie Barclay who signed him on. It was in the studio of Barclay where he met his future wife, Simone Mazaltarim.

In 1958, Perret carried on touring round Parisian cabaret bars and crossed France and Africa as a part of the American group, The Platters. In November that year, a pleurisy forced him to take two years off in a sanatorium.

A master of the subtleties of the French language and French slang (he even rewrote some of Jean de La Fontaine's fables), his songs are often cheeky (for example Le zizi (The willy), asking questions in a seemingly naive child's tone, but has written more serious political songs, such as La bête est revenue, La petite kurde, Vert de Colère or Lily.

In 1995, he recorded in duet with Sophie Darel the French song Maître Pierre for the album C'était les Années Bleues.

He participated in the committee for the simplification of the administrative language (COSLA).

Source: Article "Pierre Perret" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.