Jean-Louis Murat

Jean-Louis Bergheaud - better known by the stage name Jean-Louis Murat - is a brooding singer-songwriter born in Chamalières, France on January 28, 1952. He spent the bulk of his childhood in rural isolation on his grandparents' farm in Murat-le-Quaire, the village he went on to take his pseudonym from. He began learning music at the age of seven, occasionally joining his father's band on cornet and tenor saxophone. A natural loner, he consumed the writing of André Gide and D.H. Lawrence and eventually became exposed to American jazz, R&B, and soul. At 17, Jean-Louis Murat was married and a father, but the relationship proved short lived, and he travelled and did odd-jobs for several years before committing himself to music at 23. He and some friends from Clermont-Ferrand formed the band Clara and worked with William Sheller. Clara didn't last long but did lead to a solo record deal with EMI. The deal proved something of a false start, however, when Murat's recordings performed poorly, and a subsequent deal with CBS didn't do any better. In 1987, however, he signed with Virgin Records and returned with the surprise hit “Si Je Devais Manquer de Toi.” The 1989 album Cheyenne Autumn also fared well, notching up 100,000 sales and led to commercial and critical successes through the '90s and into the 2000s including the single “Regrets,” a duet with Mylène Farmer, in 1991, plus hit albums such as Murat en Plein Air (1991), Le Manteau de Pluie (1991), Sentiment Nouveau (1992), Mustango (1999), Morituri (2016), and La Vraie Vie de Buck John (2021). Jean-Louis Murat died on May 25, 2023, at the age of 71.

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