Frida Bocarra born 29 October 1940

Danielle Frida Hélène Boccara (29 October 1940 – 1 August 1996) was a French singer of Italian descent and born in Casablanca, who performed and recorded in a number of languages, including French, Spanish, English, Italian, German, Dutch and Russian. She recorded more than thirty albums in thirty years of career.

Boccara was born in Casablanca, Morocco, into a Jewish family of Italian origin that lived in Tunisia before they settled down in Morocco. 

She started a vocal and instrumental trio with her brother and sister in Casablanca, with some success. But she knew she would have to try her chance in Paris, where she was taken on by the celebrated teacher of chanson singing and composition, Mireille, who in 1954 had founded her Petit Conservatoire de la Chanson in the rue de l'Universite, where she used her unique training methods to help talented youngsters discover their true musical abilities and personalities.

In 1964, Boccara had submitted the song Autrefois to the French Eurovision Song Contest selection panel, but she was unsuccessful. Through Mireille, Frida soon began making music-hall appearances and recordings, and was launched on an international career, for at first she appeared mainly outside France, in tours of Eastern Europe, and performed in jazz festivals like the one in Sofia in 1967.

                              

She also travelled to Australia, Canada and Central and South America, where several of her hit numbers became successful: "Cent millions chansons" ("One Hundred Thousand Songs"), and "Les Moulins de mon coeur" ("The Windmills of my Heart"), 

Frida with Eddy Marnay

written and composed especially for her warm, intimate, caressing voice by Eddy Marnay and Emile Stern, her permanent parolier and composer.

One of the very few really memorable songs of the deplorable Eurovision Song Contest (Grand Prix, 1969) was "Un Jour un enfant", and in those days, when a triumph on television truly mattered, it shot Boccara to even greater fame. Her song shared first place along with the entries from the Netherlands, the UK, and Spain.

She won the prestigious Prix de l'Academie Charles Cros, and was also honoured with a number of golden discs.  She never forgot her classical roots, and some of her later songs were set to music by Telemann and other great classics, always by her parolier Eddy Marnay.

Most of the songs performed by Boccara were written by Marnay, but she also performed songs composed by Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Charles Aznavour, Émile Stern, Michel Legrand, Michel Magne, Nino Rota and Mikis Theodorakis.

In the late 1960s, she also recorded "Un pays pour nous", a song that was a French version of "Somewhere" (from the musical West Side Story). Leonard Bernstein, who composed the original melody, declared that Boccara's version was his favourite. Other of her famous songs include "L'enfant aux cymbales" (1969), "Belle du Luxembourg" (1969), "La croix, l'étoile et le croissant" (1970), 

"Venise va mourir" (1970), "Trop jeune ou trop vieux" (1971), "Valdemosa" (1976), "L'année où Piccolli... (Jouait Le choses de la vie)" (1978), "Un monde en sarabande" (1979) and "La prière" (1979).

During the 70's she was a popular guest on many TV shows in Canada, Australia, South America and the Netherlands. In Russia she sold over a million records. Boccara renewed her links with Eurovision by participating in the French national finals of 1980 – performing "Un enfant de France" – and 1981 – with "Voilà comment je t'aime". However, neither song won.

When success slowed down Frida withdrew from the music business. She died in 1996 in Paris, France, aged 55, from a pulmonary infection, after some health problems.

(Edited mainly from Wikipedia )