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Bobbejaan Schoepen (born Modest Schoepen, May 16 1925, Boom, Antwerp) is a Flemish entertainer, singer, guitarist, composer, former actor, and founder of one of the most popular theme parks in Europe: Bobbejaanland.
As a child Modest Schoepen grew up in his father's smithy. With a few dollars and a lot of powerful work ethic he started his remarkable career in the late 30s doing local vaudeville performances. Now he is among the 200 richest people of Belgium. (Ludwig Verduyn, 2000)
He is the first Belgian singer successfully to pursue an international career. Bobbejaan Schoepen introduced American Country music recordings to the masses of West-Europe (country music is only one style in his broad musical orientation). Apart from British artists, he is the first European to have performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville (three performances with Roy Acuff in 1953). He is also well known for his highly accomplished professional and virtuoso whistling. His comprehensive and sometimes wittingly countercultural catalogue stretches from cabaret, sentimental songs, instrumental film music, over chansons to absolutely crazy folk music. He sold about five million copies of the songs in this repertoire of almost 600 songs.
Schoepen started as a classically trained singer and guitarist, an artistic jack-of-all-trades and master of none, who would always be very hard to categorize.
At the beginning of his career, he was a popular singer-entertainer with broad musical perspectives, renowned as a bohemian entertainer with a very typical sense of irony and tongue-in-cheeck assertiveness. With his typical sense of self-deprecation he derived his stage name is from the South African song "Bobbejaan klim die berg" (Baboon, climb that mountain!).
He was arrested by the Nazis during his debut in 1943 in Antwerp when he sang a South African song "Mamma, 'k wil 'n man hê!" ("No mom no, I don't want German man, cause I don't eat schweinefleisch"), which was interpreted as anti-German.
In 1947, he met Jacques Kluger, a renowned Jewish manager who was looking for local talent. Right away he recognized a promising performer and asked Bobbejaan to entertain the American and Canadian troops during the Nuremberg Trials, in Frankfurt and Berlin. One of these floor shows happened to be attended by the American general and military governor Lucius D. Clay, who invited him straight away for more performances. These tours would influence his country repertoire and strongly stimulate his career. His first record became a hit single in Belgium in 1948: De jodelende fluiter (The Yodeling Whistler). In 1949 he also entertained the Dutch soldiers during the Indonesian War with 127 performances within three months of his own show.
He enjoyed enormous popularity during the 1950s and the beginning of the 1970s. In 1951 the Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans was a member of his band, and in January 1955 the Belgian singer Jacques Brel was supporting act for one week in his show in the legendary concert hall Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. That autumn he toured for three months in Congo with his show.
Schoepen toured about twenty countries, among others with Josephine Baker, Caterina Valente, (once) Gilbert Bécaud. He is the first European artist (apart from the UK) to have appeared in the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. In 1953 he played there about three times with Roy Acuff. In 1957 he recorded in New York for RCA Records with the legendary Steve Sholes, who offered him a record contract and a North-American tour to promote his songs as "Bobby John". He gave a guest-appearance in the Ed Sullivan TV-Show, and he also played a single performance with Country singer Red Foley (1910-1968) in Springfield Missouri. But Bob, who was already on tour for over ten years, didn't want to continue his European succes in the US. He also had contractual duties in Europe and he was looking for a place to settle down (his later Bobbejaanland). Also in 1957 he was the second Belgian contestant to the Eurovision Song Contest 1957, tying for eighth place with Lys Assia with the song Straatdeuntje. The performance is memorable in featuring a whistling solo. Schoepen is also rumoured not to have known which song he was to perform at the Contest until he arrived, only rehearsing his entry once before performance. In 1958 he performed at the Royal Variety Show, a gala of the British Queen Mother. In 1959 and 1960 Bobbejaan Schoepen covered A Pub With No Beer, originally by the Australian country singer Slim Dusty (1957, written by Gordon Parsons). The Dutch and German cover versions of the song became number-one hits (even evergreens) in Belgium and in Austria. In Germany the song remained 30 weeks in the charts. In 1961 he became one of the musical highlights of the Filmfestival in Berlin. A few years later Bobbejaan's evergreen Eerbied voor jouw grijze haren ('Grey hairs') became an international hit, covered by the popular German singers Heino, Camillo Felgen and also James Last, with over three million copies sold. In France, Richard Anthony scored a big hit with his "Je me suis souvent demandé". Because of this song, Schoepen was honoured with an artistic award in Paris in 1965. During the sixties and seventies he was a regular visitor of the United States, where he took up with actor Roy Rogers, Nudie (the fashion designer of Elvis, Johnny Cash et al.), and with Tex Williams, the founding father of swing country. The foursome occasionally performed together in local clubs. Williams himself will release Schoepen's "Fire and Blisters" in 1974.
In 1959 Bobbejaan Schoepen got weary of touring and decided to build his own music theater: after draining a 30 ha marsh he built a venue where he could perform as often as he liked. In 1961, the Bobbejaanland amusement park was born (his personal manager Jacques Kluger invented the name). In 1975 he and his wife Josée decided to build an attraction park around his theater. Within 40 years this domain became one of the top amusements parks in Europe, run by him and his family.
During his career, Bobbejaan Schoepen performed in 5 films as an actor or singer. In 1999 the alternative rock band Dead Man Ray wrote a new soundtrack for the film At the Drop of A Head (alias De Ordonnans or Pub with no beer) and went on tour with the film in the Low Countries. The original movie from 1962 starred Schoepen; the original soundtrack was at that time immensely popular pop band Les Cousins (The Cousins).
The life of Schoepen is also a lucky bag of funny and colourful anecdotes. Once, he managed to buy the original Zorro's horse from guntumbler Casey Tibbs, but unfortunately the animal tread on an exposed cable and died. From his American friend Nudie Cohn, he acquired the peculiar white Pontiac Nudie Mobiles, skilfully decorated with American coins. He had to count out ten thousand dollar for it, but looking back he would consider the white Pontiac as the most effective and talked-about element of all the attractions he featured. Probably just as characteristic for his inventive spirit of enterprise, is the fact that Schoepen is the original deviser of the name Paribas, the French-Dutch banking group, later BNP-Paribas.
All the same, the life of Bobbejaan Schoepen was not without its difficulties: during wartime he was thrown into prison twice. Later, he lost his virtuoso whistle gift due to an operative intervention. Until recently he suffered from intestinal cancer, which gave rise to the idea to part with his life's work Bobbejaanland. Apparently there was no stopping him: in the winter of 2003, a major investement of 12 million dollar was made for a couple of world premières: the Typhoon (a roller coaster with a fourfold loop and a free fall) and the Sledge Hammer (a giant shuttle that reaches topspeeds of 110 km/h). In 2003, the consumer’s organisation Test-Aankoop conducts a large-scale comparative survey of 13 European amusement parks. On a European level, Bobbejaanland came off second best after Phantasialand for as good as every aspect under scrutiny, together with Disneyland and the Parc Astérix. For Belgium, Bobbejaanland is considered to be the best. (Test-Aankoop magazine 477, June 2004).
But in April 2004 the final decision to sell the park was taken, after a preparatory period of more than three years. With this decision, the last family concern in the sector of amusement parks in Belgium disappeared. During the 43 years of the Schoepen-management, we can consider the founding father to be the artistic brain behind the park. His wife José (who is the oldest of sixteen children) was the commercial backbone, and her sister Louise set up a solid foundation with regard to accounting and finances. The key to succes was the mutual trust in this triumvirate and their powerful work ethic. Bobbejaan Schoepen and his wife still live on the domain.
After Bobbejaanland was sold, Bobbejaan Schoepen focused again on his music career. In 2005 he gave four surprise performances on the literary festival Saint Amour. Currently he is working on new CD releases, featuring Geike Arnaert (Hooverphonic) and Daan (Dead Man Ray). On February 13th 2007, Bobbejaan Schoepen received in Belgium a Lifetime Achievement Award (ZAMU).