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Frank Alamo

French singer (1941–2012)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ2339515
Source-derived summary

Frank Alamo (born Jean-François Grandin; 12 October 1941 – 11 October 2012) was a French singer. He achieved his greatest success in the 1960s.

Biography

He was born in Paris. He sang in a leading French children's choir, "Les Petits Chanteurs à la croix de bois", and studied music in London between 1957 and 1960. While skiing at Val-d'Isère in 1962, he met pop music promoter and record company executive Eddie Barclay, who heard him singing popular English and American songs in French. Barclay signed him to his label, and persuaded him to take the stage name Frank Alamo, the surname being in tribute to John Wayne's film The Alamo.

Alamo helped popularise the yé-yé style of music in France. His hit records included "Biche ô ma Biche" ("Sweets for My Sweet"), "Je veux prendre ta main" ("I Want to Hold Your Hand"), and "Je me bats pour gagner" ("A Hard Day's Night"). In all, he released 30 singles over a five-year period in the early and mid-1960s, including some original songs.

He retired from the music business when he married in 1969, becoming a photographer and later a manager in the automobile industry.

Editorial summary

“Frank Alamo” enters the record as french singer (1941–2012). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Frank, Alamo and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1941, 2012, 1957, 1960—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1941-10-12. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Frank, Alamo and French.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Frank Alamo” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Frank, Alamo and French provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2339515. VIAF identifies the subject as 69114629. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 2012, 1957 and 1960.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Frank Alamo”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Frank Alamo primary sources, Frank Alamo archive and Frank research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Frank Alamo”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Frank Alamo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.