Lou Deprijck

She initially did backing vocals for Lou & the Hollywood Bananas before taking the name Viktor Lazlo from a character in the 1942 film Casablanca at Deprijck's suggestion.

Francis Jean "Lou" Deprijck (11 January 1946 – 19 September 2023) was a Belgian singer and record producer.

Deprijck was born in Lessines on 11 January 1946.

He moved to Brussels in 1964 to work for the Régie des Télegraphes et Téléphones, at the time the telephone company of Belgium, and then moved to Thailand 25 years later.

Deprijck resided largely near Pattaya, Thailand.

The story of his life in Thailand was shown in the VTM TV channel documentary Vlamingen in Pattaya (Flemings in Pattaya) as part of the Belgian news program Telefacts.

Life in Pattaya inspired him to rewrite the text of his most famous song "Kingston, Kingston" into "Pattaya, Pattaya", which soon became the unofficial hymn of Pattaya.

Lou Deprijck died on 19 September 2023, shortly after being admitted to a Brussels hospital.

He was 77.

His first group Pop' Liberty 6 had a complete flop in 1967 with "Je Suis Pop Et Tout À Fait Dingue".

However he later found success with Two Man Sound, a Latin-pop outfit formed with Sylvain Vanholme of the Wallace Collection and Yvan Lacomblez.

He was a major figure in the Belgian pop scene of the 1970s and 1980s, with more than 20 million copies of his compositions sold worldwide, making him one of the best selling Belgian artists.

Two Man Sound sold over a million copies of their 1975 single "Charlie Brown" while the album Disco Samba, with the eponymous song, had sales of around 1.4 million copies in Latin America.

Deprijck is best known for having co-written with Yves Lacomblez, and for having provided the singing voice for the Plastic Bertrand 1978 single "Ça plane pour moi".

Deprijck also had a major 1978 solo success in France and Belgium with ska/reggae song "Kingston, Kingston", under The Moniker Lou & The Hollywood Bananas.

In the 1980s, Deprijck was also the creative force behind the success of Viktor Lazlo, born Sonia Dronier, whom he met at Le Mirano nightclub in Brussels.

In 1984, calling himself Lou Van Houten, Deprijck released the album Collures with Boris Bergman under the pseudonym Les Epatants.

He produced the self-titled album Viktor Lazlo in 1987 for her, as well as the album Hot & Soul in 1989.

In the English-speaking world, Deprijck's best known hit was "Ça plane pour moi", which he recorded and sang for Plastic Bertrand, who remains generally credited for the song (and was upheld legally in 2006 as being entitled to be called its artist).

In fact, Deprijck was also the "voice" of Plastic Bertrand's first four albums.

In 2006, a Belgian appeal court ruled that Bertrand was the "legal performer" of the classic track, but the ruling was overturned in 2010.