BELGIUM – Claude Lombard studied at INSAS College, where he specialized in piano and guitar. She was a musician, composer, and singer. He wrote -among other things- the musical comedy Attention Fragile.
She was born in Brussels in 1945. Her real name is Claude Deruyck. She took her artistic nickname from the street she lived on when she was little, in Brussels. She was the daughter of Claude Alix-Bertrand (Claude Canderbroek), a great cabaret artist.
Her father was David Bee (Ernest Jean Craps), a composer, orchestrator, and conductor who played the saxophone, clarinet, and harp. The couple co-wrote Le plus beau jour de ma vie (he seond 1956 Eurovision entry, as that year each country participated with two songs) with Mony Marc, with Claude Alix signing the music and David Bee writing the lyrics.
She started recording in 1965, either solo or with her husband, the Belgian singer and lyricist Freddy Zegler. She released her first album in 1969, while at the same time presenting a youth show on Belgian television. Her husband died in the late 1970s.
At that period, her personal discography was completed, with her second solo album (1978). Then he decided to move to Paris, making a new career. There he distinguished himself as a comedian in cinema and television.
Claude Lombard was a permanent choir at the concerts of the leading French singer, of Armenian origin, Charles Aznavour (Shahnourh Vaghinag Aznavourian) from 1983 until his death in 2018, touring around the world. They always sang the song Mon émouvant amour together.
In 1968, Lombard’s song “Quand tu reviendras” (“When You Come Back”) was chosen by jury voting from ten songs as the Belgian representative in the 13th Eurovision Song Contest, which took place on 6 April in London. “Quand tu reviendras” finished in joint seventh place (with Monaco and Yugoslavia) of 17 entries.
Lombard returned to Eurovision in 1973, albeit as a backing singer, for that year’s Belgian entry “Baby, Baby” performed by Nicole & Hugo. Although this finished in the last place in the voting, the song, and particularly the performance, has since assumed iconic status in the Eurovision fan community.
Lombard moved to France in the 1970s. She co-wrote a successful musical called Attention – fragile and had gone on to enjoy a successful career as a musical voiceover artist in film and television, with many credits to her name.
Films and shows she had worked on include Beauty and the Beast, The Prince of Egypt, and Fraggle Rock. She also sang the French version of the Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari, Générique Les quatre filles du docteur March, theme song in 1988.
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