Donald Lautrec

French-Canadian actor and singer Donald Lautrec was born on July 13, 1940, in Jonquière, Quebec. After working as an acrobat and master of ceremonies in several cabarets around Montreal during his early adulthood, he became a bodyguard for Quebecois singer Michel Louvain. This connection helped him get in touch with local impresario Yves Dufresne, who got Lautrec his first singing gig at the Hotel Central Saint-Martin in Laval. "Personne au monde," his first single, saw the light in 1961 and quickly established him as one of the most promising talents in Quebec's pop music scene. Released in 1964, his songs "C'est le Ska" and "Manon, viens danser le ska" popularized the ska dance craze across French Canada and were followed by other highly successful singles such as "Action" (1965), "Tu dis des bêtises" (1966), and "Un jour, un jour" (1967), the theme song to Expo 67. Over the course of the next few years, Donald Lautrec represented Canada at music festivals in Poland and Brazil and toured France with Nana Moskouri. Towards the late 1960s, he ditched the yé-yé influences that characterized his early work in favor of a more mature sound on singles like "Alleluia - Les Fleurs Du Soleil," "Hosanna," and "Éloïse," the latter of which reached the top of the Quebecois charts. In 1972, Donald Lautrec collaborated with lyricist Luc Plamondon on the album Fluffy which, despite spawning the Number 1 hit single "Le mur derrière la grange," was considered a commercial flop at the time of its release. Even though his popularity declined in the following decades, he continued to perform with the retro-themed show Les 3 L with Michel Louvain and Peter Lalonde and enjoyed great success as a TV host. In 2009, he surprised his fans with the release of the album Lautrec À Jamais, his first album since 1981's Lautrec.