The singer Pascal Danel is associated with two of France's greatest hits of the 1960s, "La Plage aux romantiques" and "Kilimandjaro". Real name Jean-Jacques Pascal Buttafoco, the Corsican-born singer was born in Paris on March 31, 1944, and grew up in Dijon. He was interested in acrobatics, which he practiced on a motorcycle until an accident led him to music. After learning to play guitar and piano during his convalescence, he joined the rock band Les Panthères in 1962, then wrote his first songs to launch a solo career. He took his artist's name from the hamlet where he went to boarding school, Annel (Oise), and tried his luck with the Vogue label, without success. The director of Disc'AZ, radio personality Lucien Morrisse, offered him a chance and allowed him to record "La Plage aux romantiques", which became one of France's best-selling records in 1966. After two more singles, the other ballad "Kilimandjaro" (sometimes called "Les Neiges du Kilimandjaro"), with an arrangement by Laurent Voulzy, reached number two in the charts and, like the previous one, was recorded in several languages. Pascal Danel became a household name, and embarked on a tour that culminated in an appearance at the Olympia in Paris. Although not always successful, the singer continued to record several songs, including "Comme une enfant " (1967) and "Mamina " (1972), both of which proved popular with radio stations. In 1972, the singer won the Grand Prix de la Rose d'Or in Antibes with "Ton âme", which he also performed at the Mostra festival in Venice, despite Vatican censorship. He also composed for Daniel Guichard and Marcel Amont and, between 1969 and 1974, hired Laurent Voulzy as guitarist and musical director until the album Rotterdam. After the chart-topping comeback of "La Plage aux romantiques " in 1979, Pascal Danel returned to the Olympia and recorded the album Un Homme Fou d'Amour (1981). He turned to television, producing variety shows including Cadence 3, for which he composed the theme music. He went on to work as a scriptwriter, actor and composer until another accident in 1987. Returning to music with his guitarist son Jean-Pierre Danel, who produced his records, Pascal Danel produced the album Buttafoco, Retour aux Racines Corses (1994), sung entirely in Corsican, followed by Je Voulais Simplement Te Dire (2000), Le Coeur des Femmes (2007) and Putain d'Étoile (2014). He took part in the Âge tendre et tête de bois tour from 2007 to 2009, and continued to perform regularly until Âge tendre, la tournée des idoles (2016-2017). Honored by Sacem for his fifty-year career, Pascal Danel died of a heart attack following bladder surgery on July 25, 2024, at the age of 80.
