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For other people named Jacques, see Frère Jacques.

Not to be confused with Les Compagnons de la chanson.

Les Frères Jacques
Les Frères Jacques in 1968. Left to right: Georges Bellec, François Soubeyran, André Bellec and Paul Tourenne.
Background information
Genres	Comic songs
Years active	1946–1982
Labels	Polydor, Philips

Les Frères Jacques was a French comedy singing quartet who used mime, self-produced sound-effects and parody throughout their active career which lasted from 1946 to 1982. They sang works by numerous writers including Joseph Kosma, Jacques Prévert and Serge Gainsbourg. The members of the group were brothers André and Georges Bellec, François Soubeyran and Paul Tourenne.

This article is adapted from the article on French Wikipedia Les Frères Jacques, the version dated 21 September 2021.

Origins and formation

The Bellec brothers

The Bellec brothers were born in Saint Nazaire, Brittany, André in 1914 and Georges in 1918. They grew up in the Breton Vendée until the family moved to Bordeaux in 1933. After passing the French school-leavers' exams, the Baccalauréat, André started a law degree and enrolled in parallel at the Bordeaux Conservatoire. He passed his acting exams with merit and joined an acting company. Georges, less serious, liked singing bawdy songs and drawing. He was tempted by the Bordeaux art college (École des beaux-arts de Bordeaux) but, attracted by jazz, he dropped the violin and took up the cornet.

With the coming of the Second World War, André was moblised. George, who was ill, was exempt and spent time at the Hot Club of Bordeaux before getting to Paris in 1942. He became a student at the Beaux-Arts, the Paris art college, and spent time at the Hot Club de France with the likes of Claude Abadie and Boris Vian and played with Claude Luter and Django Reinhardt. Facing possible enlistment in the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO, the German forced labour system), he returned to Bordeaux and joined André, now demobilised and working in artistic education in unoccupied southern France. Joining the Chantiers de la jeunesse française (French Youth Workshops, the Vichy government's compulsory service organisation), he taught, and worked with a comedy group. At his suggestion, Georges joined too – their first singing group. Rejoining their parents, they formed a singing quartet with the daughters of family acquaintances. With the liberation, though, the members went their own ways.

François Soubeyran

François Soubeyran was born in 1919 in Dieulefit, Drôme, in south-eastern France. The family home welcomed unexpected people from all parts including a woman who set up a choir, which François joined. After gaining his Baccalauréat he did his military service, was enlisted for war service and returned to Dieulefit after the French defeat.

Towards the end of 1944, Soubeyran joined Travail et Culture (TEC, a cultural facilitation association born in 1944 from the pluralism of the Resistance), where he became a theatre ticket distributor. There he met Yves Robert, the future film director, who became a great friend. They sang together in a duo and Tourenne kept up his theatre work without enthusiasm. He tried pottery, the main trade in Dieulefit. When Robert, who was a member of a theatre group, went on tour, he passed on his theatre role to Soubeyran.

Paul Tourenne

Paul Tourenne was born in Paris in 1923. In 1937 he joined the French postal and telecoms service (Postes, télégraphes et téléphones, PTT) while keeping up his interest in music which combined pipes and flutes, harmonica, Hawaiian guitar and violin. He tried singing and harmonising, and got together with three sisters, like him early camping enthusiasts, to form a vocal quartet. They entertained camping friends on Saturday nights and Tourenne dreamed of becoming a singing teacher. When war broke out, Tourenne became a monitor at summer camp linked to radio broadcasts, setting up a choir with them. This brought him into the cultural service of the French national broadcaster Radiodiffusion nationale where he set up a children's choir and by the age of 21 was a producer. Avoiding the STO, he ended up in Limoges. After the liberation, he was back in Paris with the radio cultural service, later working in the ticketing and publicity departments of TEC.

1945: The group forms

After the liberation, André and Georges Bellec went up to Paris. Georges, back at the Beaux-Arts, painted and played the trumpet with Claude Luter, a New Orleans style clarinetist, alto saxophonist and band leader. André, meanwhile, back with the comedy group he was a member of during the war, had some success performing in factories. In November 1944 he became a teacher of dramatic art and administrator at TEC, near the Beaux-Arts. One day, the brothers met by chance in the street. André suggested setting up a vocal quartet. The singer and jazz guitarist Teymour Nawab joined them. They contacted Yves Robert who had other plans but mentioned François Soubeyran.

As the war came to an end, TEC produced programmes for the radio service as it was being re-established. For one, on 26 May 1945, the participation of the vocal quartet was suggested. It had no name, but there was a fashion for family names – the Marx Brothers, the Mills Brothers, the Andrew Sisters – why not Brothers. A studio technician suggested: "The Frères Jacques". The name evoked the children's song and the phrase faire le jacques – to mess about, to show off – which was what they wanted to do with their songs, Paul Tourenne said in an interview.

Listening to the broadcast, the actor and director Maurice Jacquemont, director of three performance spaces at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, noticed the group. He was the author and producer of a highly praised show, Les Gueux en paradis (Beggars in Paradise), which included items from the group Les Compagnons de la Route (The Travelling Companions) later Les Quatre Barbus (The Four Beardies), who wanted a break. After an audition, Les Frères Jacques were engaged and the show moved from Jacquemont's smaller studio to his larger theatre. Then Georges Bellec and Teymour Nawab set off on a tour with an orchestra: Paul Tourenne at TEC was recommended to André Bellec and Gustave Gras, a member of the TEC choir, became the fourth member.

On 14 July 1945, Les Frères Jacques appeared for the first time in public, at a gala broadcast from the gardens of the Palais-Royal. On 1 August, they made their first appearance at Jacquemont's Comédie des Champs Elysées and confirmed their radio success. One evening, they met the actor, singer, humorist and author Francis Blanche who went on to contribute several songs to their repertoire.

To begin with, they sang folk songs, negro spirituals and religious songs. They were influenced by singers they had heard as children, including the Revellers and the Comedian Harmonists, and by Chanson réaliste a style of song about working class life popularised between the wars by singers including Édith Piaf, spotting its comedy potential.

"In 1945, we were motivated by the wish to sing anything that could be harmonised for four equal voices such as road songs, camp-fire songs, folk songs, moving on to comedy, poetry, negro spirituals, church songs and even those of medical students. Our first writers (such as Francis Blanche, Gilles [stage name of the Swiss writer and actor Jean Villard], Raymond Queneau, and composers Francis Poulenc, Claude Arrieu, Maurice Thiriet … showed us the way to the style that we were aiming for and which firmed up definitively with the costumes of Jean-Denis Malclès [French painter and costume designer]."

At the end of the holiday season, the Compagnons de la Route returned to Les Gueux. In September, Leon Chancerel, a writer, actor and producer, who had come up with the idea of "town and country theatre" (théâtre de la ville et des champs) suggested the Frères Jacques should do a two-month tour in Alsace, with their songs and with the play Le Médecin Malgré Lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself by Molière). "We sang for the children, and in the evening, we sang in the show," Paul Tourenne said in an interview. "I played the violin with Jo [Georges] Bellec, Soubeyran could do three guitar chords and André did percussion. After the show, we had a ball with the local accordionist, otherwise the Alsatians wouldn't come. We produced, put up the stage sets, we did everything. That two-month tour was when we learned the job as stage managers."

At the end of November, back in Paris, they had no contract but continued to rehearse. At about that time they even sang a midnight mass in Germany. They were looking for a style and a repertoire. "From a musical point of view, we were greatly inspired by American quartets: the Mills Brothers and the Golden Gate Quartet," Tourenne said in the interview. "We wanted to sing like them. Once we had found our way with Grenier and Hussenot " we knew that was how we wanted to work."

1946: Meeting Pierre Philippe and Jean-Denis Malclès

In early January 1946, Jean-Pierre Grenier, Olivier Hussenot and Yves Robert invited the Frères Jacques to join a company they had set up for a show. The Frères Jacques put in one of their songs, L'Entrecote (The Steak, a melodramatic parody about a virtuous, self-sacrificing maiden brought low by misfortune). They were rehearsing under the direction of Pierre Philippe the composer and pianist. Jean-Denis Malclès, the set designer, put together their costume including tights. The idea of white gloves came from Georges Bellec.

On 1 May 1946, a gala at La Baule brought the Frères Jacques great success. Next, they replaced the Quatre Barbus again, and worked tirelessly on L'Entrecôte, spending hours in front of a mirror working out the mime act that livened up the song. The quartet now set its sights definitively on acting out their songs in which words and music had to have their little bit of theatre. "We always put little performances with our songs … " Tourenne said in the interview. "We shut ourselves away in a room, we had to be just ourselves alone."

Working at various Paris venues and in the provinces, by September 1946 they were becoming dissatisfied with Pierre Cazenave as accompanist and welcomed Pierre Philippe for tours in Switzerland and around France – he became a fundamental member of the group. Philippe, a pianist and composer, was critical at first but he knew how to direct them and was satisfied with the results. He became their pianist and remained with them for 20 years, till December 1965.

Visually, meanwhile, they settled on the tights, leotards and varying elasticated moustaches of Jean-Denis Malclès, who also designed their stage sets – all of which varied little over the years. After a 1946 New Year's Eve show at a well-known night club, black tights and coloured waistcoats (Georges Bellec's yellow, Paul Tourenne's pale blue-grey, André Bellec's green and François Soubeyran's red) would become standard.

They had no fear of giving successful songs their own treatment in their early repertoire, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, for example (L'Homme du trapèze volant). They brought in new and unknown songs which they turned into classics – for example Le Général Castagnetas (General Castagnettes), for which they wore ridiculous sombreros with their customary black tights, coloured, close-fitting shirts, waistcoats and "gallic" moustaches.

Their first 78rpm record came out in 1948. They had plenty of engagements but it was when they met the artists' agent Jacques Canetti that they started to take the limelight. He persuaded Jacques Prévert, sceptical at first, to write and Joseph Kosma to compose music for them. Records and radio broadcasts spread their fame beyond Paris. With L'Inventaire (The inventory, lyrics by Jacques Prévert, an evocation of a life in a list of disparate items,) they won the Grand Prix du Disque twice, in 1950 and 1958. They sang with Édith Piaf and Brigitte Bardot. In 1959, the Frères Jacques put on an after-dinner show at the British Embassy where the guests included the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. One song was Les Pasteurs (The Pastors). According to Jean Cocteau, "A song about English ministers drunk on Beaujolais didn't go down terribly well."

In 1965, Hubert Degex, who had worked with Petula Clark among others, replaced Pierre Philippe on the piano.

Final years

The Frères Jacques gave their last show on 13 January at Paris's Théâtre de l'Ouest. All four members retired.

Pierre Philippe, their pianist from the beginning till 1965, died on 14 June 1995.

A tribute to the group was given at the Casino de Paris on 12 and 13 January 1996 to mark the 50th anniversary of their foundation. The audience included numerous performers but the show was not broadcast on television.

Jean-Denis Malclès, who created their costumes, died on 30 May 2002; Jean Soubeyran on 21 October 2002; André Bellec on 13 October 2008; Georges Bellec on 13 December 2012 and Paul Tourenne on 20 November 2016.

External sources

The Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (Paris City Library) has an archive of the Frères Jacques that belonged to Paul Tourenne. It includes stage costumes, manuscript and printed song parts, commercial and private sound recordings, programmes, posters, drawings, press cuttings and letters.

The French Wikipedia page on the Frères Jacques has an extensive discography.

Spotify has a number of LPs and YouTube has clips of the Frères Jacques in performance.