He gave his first and stage name to Johnny Hallyday. Lemoine Gardner Ketcham, better known by his famous pseudonym Lee Halliday (without the first y) died on Tuesday September 5, at the age of 95. It was he, the American-born music hall dancer and singer, whom the Youth Idol always considered his “father of the heart”.
The emotional and almost paternal bond that united these two acrobats is part of the legend of Jean-Philippe Smet alias of course Johnny Hallyday…the y having replaced the i after a simple spelling mistake. Their story begins like this. At the end of the 1940s Lee Halliday fell in love with Desta, a cousin of Johnny. The two acrobatic lovers take in the abandoned child. With them and Desta’s sister, Menen, with “the Halliday’s” therefore, the child turns from show to show for ten years. It is only natural that he will take the pseudonym of Halliday when he himself begins to fly on his own in 1959.
Also read The Eye of the INA: the time when Johnny Hallyday started to light the fire
In 1960, the historic misspelling on a 45 rpm that changes the “i” to “y”, is finally dubbed by Lee. A year later, “the father of heart”, quite naturally becomes Johnny’s impresario and to further mark their artistic filiation adopts in turn this pseudonym Hallyday which brings luck.
Johnny and Lee in 1980 in Tahiti
Johnny, who knew his real father Léon Smet very little, repeated all the affection he had for Lee during an interview given in the mid-1960s: “There are a lot of people to whom I owe many things. But Lee Halliday is surely the person in my life who served as my father, who raised me, who taught me a little dancing.
Until 1979, Lee, now Hallyday, produced almost all of Johnny’s records. He recounted this epic twice in memoir books: the first, released in 1964, was simply titled Lee Hallyday tells Johnny. The second, released in 2000, co-signed by Desta Hallyday and titled Johnny, the childhood of a star, will be more intimate. We finally understood by reading it why all his life Jean-Philippe Smet considered Lee as his mentor, his father at heart, and above all a real father who had not abandoned him.
