Michel Laurent & The Mardi Gras

Michel Laurent

Born in a bourgeois family of an actress mother and a violinist father in Tunisia, Michel was cradled in the music of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Bethoven and Mozart in his early ages. It was also his family who inspired him at the age of 13 to pursuit his hobby of music by offering him his first guitar, his first recording machine and all the top hit albums in the American music chart at that moment like those of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard and the Platters.
Since then, Michel and his friends grouped together to practise and play under the sun and on the white sandy beach of Carthage, the beautiful resort city where later on they started playing in hotels and restaurants to the music lovers of the French colony country.
Moving to Paris after the political change in Tunisia in 1961, Michel kept playing in different groups whilst continuing his education in the two famous high-schools of France - Le Lycee de Jesuite Albert de Mun and Le Lycee Chaptal.
His training and education at the "Ecole Normale de Musique" has made this young man the official musician of the balls playing during weekends and festivals around the country until the day he met with an American Guitarist and Composer of Blues/Soul - Mickey Baker. This American composer of the famous hit "Love is Strange" has persuaded Michel to record the adaptation of "Ain't that a Shame" into "C'est bien Fini" marking Michel's debut into the showbiz as a singer. And this American composer has always been Michel's "big" old friend until now.
The second single that Michel introduced was called "Le Pantin". Composed and sung himself, Le Pantin became the hit which lasted the longest time ever in the history of the show "Salut les Copains" - France's renowned show of rock n' roll for teenagers at that time.
After 7 albums of rock n' roll, Michel returned to his original feelings of classical music writing songs which are fervent with poems and sentiment. His "Ma Reine de Saba - Queen of Saba" turned into his second big hit which was recorded by over 250 singers in many languages and was sold over 50,000,000 copies all over the world. The song also brought him the chance to participate in the World Most Popular Songs Festival in Tokyo in 1983 and "Ma Reine de Saba" itself has become one of the favorites in Yahama pianos and keyboard Melodies and is sold in music sheets since then.
In the period of Funk and Soul that followed, he wrote "Sing Sing Barbara" which was recorded in New York by himself and the Group Mardi Gras in English, French and Italian. Immediately Sing Sing Barbara was nominated as the Number One in Europe, and in Italy, it stayed the top of the hit for six months consecutively, the record which had never been gained by any of the foreign songs before.
After working sometime with an American production house All Platinum Records in New York, he returned to Paris writing the album "New York City" with his friend Luc Aulivier, that composes of song stories of a Frenchman in New York trying to make his way out in the American chaotic society after the Vietnam War. He wrote songs for Sheila, Dalida and some other French singers after the album.
With the coming into being of the disco and the techno trends in the late 80s, Michel withdrew from the showbiz to rest in his peaceful garden - his professional studio- where he keeps writing and recording just for his loved ones and friends like he always says "once you start writing, you will never be able to stop."

http://www.michellaurent.info/