Biography
Les Frères Jacques emerged as a French vocal quartet in the years immediately following World War II and soon established themselves among the country’s most cherished musical institutions, sustaining an active presence for close to four decades. Their first release, a 78 rpm collection issued in 1947, launched an unbroken sequence of widely praised and commercially successful discs that continued across successive generations while encompassing every major shift in recording technology and format. The original four members stayed together without alteration from the group’s founding until the deaths of Francois Soubeyran in 2002 and Andre Bellec in 2008; only Georges Bellec and Tourenne Paul remained afterward. A 1996 box set assembled previously unreleased material together with the most popular selections from the quartet’s extensive catalog, while a second collection, Farewell Recital, appeared in 1998 and preserved the farewell concert the ensemble had given in 1982.
Albums
