Ferre Grignard (13 March 1939 – 8 August 1982) was a Belgian

skiffle Skiffle is a music genre, genre of folk music with influences from American folk music, blues, Country music, country, Bluegrass music, bluegrass, and jazz, generally performed with a mixture of manufactured and homemade or improvised instruments. ...

-singer from

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

, Belgium. He had success with a number of songs, such as "

Ring Ring, I've Got To Sing "Ring, Ring I've Got to Sing" is a 1966 protest song composed and performed by Ferre Grignard. It became an international hit. The song criticizes racism and war through an African-American who doesn't want to fight for his country, because of th ...

", "Yama, Yama, Hey", and "My Crucified Jesus".

Biography

Ferre Grignard was born in

in 1939. He learned to play the harmonica and guitar when he was young. At the end of the 1950s, he went to an

art academy where he formed a skiffle group. He was unsuccessful as a painter, but he could play the guitar and sing the

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

and his performances in "''De Muze''", an Antwerp jazz café, made him well known in the Antwerp artists' world. He went to the United States for a time but was expelled for being an anarchist. The young generation accepted him as the first Belgian protest singer, because of his

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to dif ...

-like appearance and the content of his songs. In 1965 he performed at the first "Jazz-festival" at

Bilzen Bilzen () is a former Municipalities of Belgium, municipality and City status in Belgium, city located in the Belgium, Belgian province of Limburg (Belgium), Limburg. In 2021, Bilzen had a total population of 32,536. The total area is 75.90 ...

. He was discovered by Hans Kusters (who owned the record company HKM). His first single "

Ring Ring, I've Got to Sing "Ring, Ring I've Got to Sing" is a 1966 protest song composed and performed by Ferre Grignard. It became an international hit. The song criticizes racism and war through an African-American who doesn't want to fight for his country, because of th ...

" was released and charted in Belgium and the Netherlands. Other songs such as "Yama, Yama, Hey", "

Drunken Sailor "Drunken Sailor", also known as "What Shall We Do with a/the Drunken Sailor?" or "Up She Rises", is a traditional sea shanty, listed as List of folk songs by Roud number, No. 322 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It was sung aboard sailing ships at ...

", "My Crucified Jesus" also charted with their mixture of

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

and

. At the height of his career he performed at the Paris Olympia. The Belgian artist George Smits was a member of Ferre Grignard's band around that time. After the ensuing international success, things started to go wrong. He went to live in a

mansion A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word ''manse'' originally defined a property l ...

, where he made music, painted and partied with the 20 friends who lived with him. He also refused to fill in his tax-forms, so he was ordered to pay the taxes and large part of the

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

from his music went directly to taxes. He neglected his career and was soon forgotten by his fans. A comeback in the 1970s failed. He died in Antwerp of throat cancer in 1982. At that time he was living in an attic without heating, surrounded by empty bottles. Grignard was buried at the Schoonselhof cemetery, among many of Antwerp's most notable citizens.

Discography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Grignard, Ferre 1939 births 1982 deaths 20th-century Belgian male singers 20th-century Belgian singers Belgian folk singers Belgian blues singers Belgian blues guitarists Belgian male guitarists Belgian male painters Belgian political music artists Belgian harmonica players 20th-century Belgian painters Deaths from cancer in Belgium Deaths from throat cancer Musicians from Antwerp Skiffle musicians English-language singers from Belgium 20th-century guitarists