John William

Better known by his artist name John William, Ernest-Armand Huss was born on October 9, 1922 in Grand-Bassam, today in Côte d'Ivoire but then in Afrique-Occidentale Française (AOF), a general government that brought together eight French West African colonies in a single federation between 1895 and 1958. Taken from his mother when he was just a year and a half old, he was entrusted to a distant relative in Seine-et-Marne, where he grew up. After completing his schooling, at the age of 17 he became an apprentice fitter-toolmaker at the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt. During the Second World War, he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and politically deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, before being taken in by the Swedish Red Cross at the end of the conflict. Unwilling to return to factory work, he took singing lessons and adopted the pseudonym John William. Aware of the growth and new popularity of American music, he began to perform in cabarets, becoming increasingly famous, particularly in 1952, when he won the Grand Prix d'interprétation de Deauville for his song "Je suis un nègre" (I'm a Negro). This success was confirmed in 1961, when he was awarded the Coq d'or de la chanson française for "Le voyageur sans étoile", a song for which he also received the Médaille de la Ville de Paris, and in 1966, when he won the best-selling record of the year award at Midem in Cannes for "La Chanson de Lara". He definitively established himself in the hearts of the public with his world-famous film credits, including Alamo, Lawrence of Arabia, An Island in the Sun, The Longest Day, The Great Escape, and above all Doctor Zhivago with "La Chanson de Lara". In the early 1970s, he became the lead singer on the ocean liner France, which won him a new American audience, for whom he was particularly popular. In 1990, he published his autobiography, in which he recounts in detail the ordeal of his deportation. 2005 promises to be a busy year, with a farewell tour planned in Martinique, but which he has to cancel for health reasons. Awarded the Légion d'Honneur the same year, he finally passed away in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) six years later, on January 8, 2011, at the age of 88. Several compilations pay tribute to him, such as Anthologie 1952-1962, released in 2015.

Please enable Javascript to view this page competely.