Claude Antoine Marie François (1 February 1939 – 11 March 1978), also known by the nickname Cloclo, was a French pop singer, songwriter and dancer.
Claude Marie Antoine François was born on February 1, 1939
in Ismailia, Egypt, where his French-born father worked as a shipping traffic controller
on the Suez Canal. His Italian-born mother encouraged him musically, getting
him into violin and piano lessons; François preferred the drums, however. When
Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, François and his family were
repatriated to France, settling in Monte Carlo.
His father fell seriously ill not long after, and François
was forced to get a job and help support the family. He worked in a bank by
day, but soon caught on as a drummer with local orchestras on the hotel and
nightclub circuit. He made his professional debut with Louis Frozio in 1957,
over his father's strenuous objections. Around 1959, François started to try
his hand at singing, and proved a hit with resort audiences around the French
Riviera.While working the clubs, he met Janet Woollacott in 1959, an
English dancer whom he married in 1960.
In 1961, he and his first wife moved to Paris. François found a gig performing with Les Gamblers, but soon
decided to embark on a solo career, hoping to take advantage of the rock and
roll fad emerging among the youth of Paris. Still in 1961, he landed a record
deal and issued a debut single, "Nabout Twist," under the name Koko.
It flopped. However, his second release, an Everly Brothers adaptation retitled
"Belles, Belles, Belles," was a million-selling smash for Philips in
1962.
Adopted as a teen idol by the French music press and the
popular Salut Les Copains show, he scored several more hits over the next year,
including "Marche Tout Droit," "Pauvre Petite Fille Riche,"
"Dis-Lui," and the late-1963 chart-topper "Si J'Avais un
Marteau" (a French version of "If I Had a Hammer"). Thus
established as a star, François embarked on a headlining tour of France in
1964, and wound it up with an appearance at the famed Olympia theater in Paris.
François recorded prolifically during the mid-'60s, cranking
out single after single and adaptation after adaptation. He added the first
version of the Clodettes to his stage show in 1966, which gave him a whole new
appeal in concert, and mounted another hugely successful tour. By now long
since separated from his first wife, he had a brief and well-publicized romance
with singer France Gall in 1967. In the aftermath of the breakup, he co-wrote
and recorded a song called "Comme d'Habitude," which was later
adapted by Paul Anka into the English-language pop standard "My Way."
François started his own Flèche label in 1968, the same year he had the first
of two children with a new girlfriend.
François continued to perform and record with considerable
success for the next few years, but broke down and collapsed on-stage in 1971
during a concert at Marseille. He recuperated in the Canary Islands for a short
time, and returned to France only to break several bones in a serious car
accident.
In 1972, he discovered songwriter Patrick Juvet, who
composed his smash hit "Le Lundi au Soleil"; however, more bad luck
followed, as François was found to owe more than two million francs in back
taxes. He had several more hits in 1973, the biggest of which was "Ça S'en
Va et Ça Revient," but suffered more misfortune when the windmill at his
country home caught fire, and when he was accidentally head-butted by a fan
during another concert at Marseille. 
François had a huge hit in 1974 with "Le Telephone
Pleure," which when translated into English (as "Tears on the
Telephone") gave him his first U.K. chart single. While in the U.K. on a
promotional tour in 1975, he narrowly avoided being killed by an IRA bombing.
By this time, he had solved some of his financial problems by acquiring a
couple of magazines (one teen-oriented, one with adult nude photography) and a
modeling agency.
In 1977 he reinvented himself as a disco singer with the
smash hits "Alexandrie, Alexandra" and "Magnolias Forever,"
two of the most enduringly popular songs of his career (and enhanced live by
the Clodettes' disco routines). Sadly, they would also be the last. On March
11, 1978 -- not long after taping a U.K. TV special -- François was taking a
bath at his Paris apartment when he noticed that the overhead light bulb needed
changing. He stood up to do so, still standing in water, and was fatally electrocuted.
News of his death was met by an outpouring of grief from French music fans, who
continue to enjoy much of his latter-day work. (Info All Music)
