Ricet Barrier

Maurice-Pierre Barrier, known as Ricet Barrier, is a singer, actor and entertainer born in Romilly-sur-Aube on August 25, 1932. After growing up in Arcueil, near Paris, he was destined to become a physical education teacher, but ended up choosing singing, which was his passion. Trained as a guitarist, he also played the banjo and ukulele, and in 1955 joined Mireille's Petit Conservatoire de la chanson, which revealed him on television. His career continued in the cabarets of the Left Bank, where he came to the attention of Jacques Canetti, artistic director of the Philips label, who signed him in 1958. With his songwriting partner Georges Weil, he interpreted hit songs from the late 1950s, in both realistic and humorous styles, such as "La Servante du château" (1958), which won a Grand Prix from the Académie Charles-Cros, "Drôle de vie " (1959) and "Rendez-Vous (Stanislas)" (1961), which was the subject of a pastiche mimed by Les Frères Jacques. Composer of the music for François Truffaut's film Tire-au-flanc 62, in which he played, Ricet Barrier multiplied his recordings of sketch songs such as "La Java des hommes-grenouilles" in 1963, before lending his voice to the credits of the animated series Saturnin le canard (1965). Alongside the 1968 hit "Les Vacanciers", he played characters in the animated series Les Aventures de Colargol (1970) and all the roles in Barbapapa (1974). His humorous lyrics were featured on albums such as Ricet Barrier (1973), Les Zygomatiques (1975), taken from the show of the same name, Les Spermatozoïdes (1975) and Isabelle, V'là l'Printemps (1976). In 1985, he created a show based on the medieval tale Le Roman de Renart, and continued to perform and record regularly until the late 1990s. After a final album entitled Furieusement Heureux (2006), he appeared on stage at a cabaret in Sadirac, Gironde, in 2010. Stricken with cancer, Ricet Barrière died on May 20, 2011 at the age of 78.

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