Biography

Soldat Louis are a French rock group originally from Lorient. The two founding members, who are still playing in the group today, are Renaud Detressan (alias Gary Wicknam) and Serge Danet (alias Soldat Louis, “Private Louis”). Soldat Louis's first album, Première bordée appeared in 1988. The first single from that album, “Du rhum des femmes”, projected them to national exposure, with the single selling 750,000 copies, and the album went double gold. Although the chanson “Du Rhum des femmes” saw the group labelled by the French public as composers of chansons à boire (drinking songs), the rest of their repertoire, which achieved less success, consists of more delicate songs (“Pavillon noir”), nostalgic (“Encore un rhum”), humorous (“Martiniquaise”), or even weary ("T'es mon secret").