Jean-Philippe Léo Smet, better known by his stage name Johnny Hallyday, was a French rock and roll and pop singer and actor, credited with having brought rock and roll to France.
Sylvie Vartan is a Bulgarian-French singer and actress. She is known as one of the most productive and tough-sounding yé-yé artists. Her performances often featured elaborate show-dance choreography, and she made many appearances on French and Italian TV.
Franklin Joseph Lymon was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of the New York City-based early rock and roll doo-wop group The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid-teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African-American members, Frankie Lymon, Jimmy Merchant, and Sherman Garnes; and two Puerto Rican members, Joe Negroni and Herman Santiago. The Teenagers' first single, 1956's "Why Do Fools Fall in Love", was also their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and that of the Teenagers fell into decline. He was found dead at the age of 25 on the floor of his grandmother's bathroom from a heroin overdose. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 as a member of the Teenagers. His life was dramatized in the 1998 film Why Do Fools Fall in Love.
Jacques Dutronc is a French singer, songwriter, guitarist, composer, and actor. Some of Dutronc's best-known hits include "Il est cinq heures, Paris s'éveille", "Le Responsable", and "Les Cactus".
Chantal de Guerre, known as Chantal Goya, is a French singer and actress.
Vince Taylor, born Brian Maurice Holden, was an English-American rock and roll singer. As the lead singer of Vince Taylor and His Playboys, sometimes Vince Taylor and the Playboys, he was successful primarily in France and other parts of Continental Europe during the late 1950s and early 1960s, afterwards falling into obscurity amidst personal problems and drug abuse. He is best remembered for his 1959 song "Brand New Cadillac", which the Clash covered on their album London Calling. He was among the inspirations for David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character.
Yé-yé or yeyé was a style of pop music that emerged in Western-Southern Europe in the early 1960s. The French term yé-yé was derived from the English "yeah! yeah!", popularized by British beat music bands such as the Beatles. The style expanded worldwide as the result of the success of figures such as French singer-songwriters Sylvie Vartan, Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy. Yé-yé was a particular form of counterculture that derived most of its inspiration from British and American rock and roll. Additional stylistic elements of yé-yé song composition include baroque, exotica, pop, jazz and the French chanson.
Claude Moine, known professionally as Eddy Mitchell, is a French singer and actor. He began his career in the late 1950s, with the group Les Chaussettes Noires. He took the name Eddy from the American expatriate tough-guy actor Eddie Constantine, and chose Mitchell as his last name simply because it sounds American. The band performed at the Parisian nightclub Golf-Drouot before signing to Barclay Records and finding almost instant success; in 1961 it sold two million records.
"Rhythm of the Rain" is a song performed by The Cascades, released in November 1962. It was written by Cascades band member John Claude Gummoe. On March 9, 1963, it rose to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and spent two weeks at number 1 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart. Billboard ranked the record as the number 4 song of 1963.
Maritie and GilbertCarpentier, a married couple, were artistic producers of very popular variety TV and radio shows in France and in many French-speaking countries, from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Julien Doré is a French singer-songwriter, musician and actor.
Danyel Gérard is a French pop singer and composer.
Guy Peellaert was a Belgian artist, painter, illustrator, comic artist and photographer, most famous for the book Rock Dreams, and his album covers for rock artists like David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. He also designed film posters for films like Taxi Driver (1976), Paris, Texas (1984), and Short Cuts (1993). The band Frankie Goes to Hollywood took their name from Peellaert's painting, titled Frank Sinatra, which featured the headline "Frankie Goes Hollywood".
Les Chaussettes Noires were a French rock and roll band founded in 1960, that was among the pioneer of rock music in France, together with Les Chats sauvages.
Maurice Biraud was a French film actor. He appeared in 90 films between 1951 and 1982. Biraud was born on 3 March 1922 in Paris. He married actress Françoise Soulié in 1956. He died on 24 December 1982 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine.
"J'ai un problème" is a French language song, a duet by Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday. However, the single cover credited a shortened version of their name as Sylvie & Johnny.
Salut les copains is a series of albums released through Universal Music France to commemorate the best of music featured in French scene as sponsored by the "Salut les copains" radio program in France and the French Salut les copains magazine. The tracks include French original singles, French-language covers of known hits as well as European and American hits popular in France. The track list is a representative wide selection of the "Yé-yé" generation of French music.
Georges Poubennec, better known under the name Georges Aber, was a French singer-songwriter.
"Comme un garçon" is a song by Sylvie Vartan from her 1967 album Comme un garçon. It was also released on an EP and as a single.
Edmond Vartan was a French musician, bandleader, arranger, and record producer of Armenian descent.
