Bobbejaan Schoepen Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Bobbejaan Schoepen (a pseudonym of Modest Schoepen) (16 May 1925 – 17 May 2010) was a Flemish pioneer in Belgian pop music, vaudeville, and European country music. Schoepen was a versatile entertainer, entrepreneur, singer-songwriter, guitarist, comedian, actor, and professional whistler, as well as the founder and former director of the amusement park, Bobbejaanland. His musical career flourished from 1948 until the first half of the 1970s. He sold more than five million copies from his repertoire of 482 songs, which extended from Twang, cabaret, instrumental film music, chansons, country, to folk and vocal music. Born in Boom, Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium, he worked his way up from a working-class environment to become one of the 200 richest people in Belgium.Schoepen married Dutch former opera singer and photographer's model Josephina (Josée) Jongen on 18 May 1961. They have five children: Robert ("Bob Jr.", 1962), Myriam (1963), Jacky (1964), Peggy (1968), and Tom (1970). His son Tom became his manager in Belgium.
He was asked to meet The Rolling Stones at the airport in Zaventem for their first tour of Belgium, but he refused because he had received word of their 'unbearable behavior'.
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Bobbejaan could be characterized as a "total performer" and entrepreneur: he was a singer-songwriter, guitarist, comedian, a former actor and professional whistler, as well as the founder and former director of the amusement park, Bobbejaanland.
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He lost his virtuoso whistling ability due to a surgical intervention, and in 1986 he underwent a serious heart operation.
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He was sent to prison twice during wartime. He was forced to go work in Germany. As an alternative he chose to sing for the Flemish workers doing compulsory labor. For this he was locked up for three months in the Dossin barracks in Mechelen from October, 1944, without a hearing or a trial.
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He was a singer-songwriter, guitarist, comedian, a former actor and professional whistler, as well as the founder and former director of the amusement park, Bobbejaanland.
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His musical career flourished from 1948 to the first half of the 1970s. He sold more than five million copies from his repertoire of nearly 600 songs, which extended from Twang, cabaret, instrumental film music, chansons, country, to folk and vocal music.
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He worked his way up from a working-class environment to become one of the 200 richest people in Belgium.
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Schoepen toured in at least twenty different countries, together with artists such as Josephine Baker, Caterina Valente, (once) Gilbert Bécaud, and Toots Thielemans (who was a guitarist in his band in 1951). He was one of the first Europeans (not including Great Britain) to have appeared at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, one of the most important centers of country music in the US. In 1953 he played there three times with Roy Acuff (1903-1992). There's also knowledge of one performance with the country singer Red Foley (1910-1968) in Springfield, Missouri. The American country singer, Tex Williams, founder of swing country, would later release a cover of his "Fire and Blisters" in the US (1974).
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In 1945, Schoepen chose Bobbejaan as his artist's name (it means baboon in Afrikaans), after the song "Bobbejaan klim die berg!" ("Bobbejaan Climb That Mountain!").
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In 1948, the legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt accompanied the first musical productions of Bobbejaan Schoepen.
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In 1958 Bobbejaan Schoepen bought Zorro's horse from the old television series from revolver-acrobat Casey Tibbs, but the horse stepped on an exposed electricity cable and passed away.
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In July 2008 he was inducted as the first European into the "Whistler's Hall of Fame", by the US International Whistlers Convention.
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Died one day after his eighty-fifth birthday.
Actor
Title
Year
Status
Character
Pro of Contra
1963
TV Series
Singer
De ordonnans
1962
Bobbejaan
Davon träumen alle Mädchen
1961
Singender Gast (as Bobbejaan)
O sole mio
1960
Sänger
Ah! Qu'il fait bon chez nous
1951
Le chanteur
Ah! t'Is zo fijn in België te leven
1950
Soundtrack
Title
Year
Status
Character
Tohuwabohu
1994-1997
TV Series performer - 2 episodes
Die Rudi Carrell Show
1973
TV Series performer - 1 episode
Ah! Qu'il fait bon chez nous
1951
Ah t'ls zo fijn in België te leven", performer: "Ah!Qu'il fait bon chez nous!"