Acadian singer Réginal Charles Gagnon, aka Cayouche, died this Wednesday at the age of 75. A true country music phenomenon, the artist has sold more than 100,000 albums and left his mark with songs like Drinking and driving Or The Queen of Bingo.
He reportedly requested medical assistance in dying due to pain caused by cancer, reported The Canadian Press.
Since 1994, he has produced five albums, including An Old Hippy, Half half, Roll, Roll, Last Call And The reminder. He lived in Maisonnette, New Brunswick, in the Acadian Peninsula.
On the social network “He leaves behind him songs and an authentic character, and many words that will remain engraved in our memory,” underlined the MP for Moncton–Riverview–Dieppe.
Born in Moncton, New Brunswick, in 1949, Réginal Charles Gagnon moved with his mother to the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1962. At age 18, he did his military service in Vietnam during the war.
He then returned to Canada in 1979 to travel the country for a few years. Based in the New Brunswick village of Burnsville, Cayouche self-produced his first record in 1994, entitled An Old Hippy. One of his most famous songs, The chain of my tractor, also appears on the album.
In 2009, the filmmaker Maurice André Aubin made the documentary Cayouche, time for a beer. A true road movie, the work offered an incursion into the singer’s world, following him on a short tour of France at the wheel of his Harley-Davidson.