The celebrated Quebec singer-songwriter and actor Claude Léveillée has died of a brain haemorrhage on June 9 at the age of 78. The winner of SOCAN’s highest honour, the Wm. Harold Moon Award, and of three SOCAN Classic Awards for his songs, Léveillée was born in Montreal in 1932. A self-taught pianist from childhood, he played many television and film roles, including in the Scoop series.

In 1959, Léveillée created the group Les Bozos with four other Quebec music greats - Hervé Brousseau, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Clémence DesRochers and André Gagnon. He was later invited to move to Paris by the legendary Édith Piaf, for whom he wrote the famous song “Les vieux pianos.”

Back in Canada in 1961, Léveillée began a period of intensive songwriting, sometimes with the likes of Gilles Vigneault, Marcel Dubé and Louis-Georges Carrier, but mostly by himself. Over the course of a career spanning five decades, he created a SOCAN catalogue of more than 1,400 songs and released some 30 albums, the last of which, Cœur sans pays (“Heart without a Country”) was recorded days before he suffered his first stroke in 2004, and was released in the fall of 2008.

Claude Léveillée was an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Knight of the National Order of Quebec and a Knight of the French Legion oh Honour. Équipe Spectra, the organizers of the FrancoFolies de Montréal, has dedicated the 2011 edition of this festival to the memory of this great artist.