He was born Jean-Claude Julien Leon Tronville in 1943 in Dijon to Lucien Rouzaud and Constance Luce Tronville, who were not married when he was born, though they married later.
At age 14, he struck out on his own, first to Paris where, as a bellhop in the Hôtel Scribe, he met Josephine Baker, an entertainer, activist, and wartime French Resistance agent.
Baker became the legal guardian of Jean-Claude, and he was then an unofficial addition to the 12 adopted children of her orphan "rainbow tribe".
He arrived in New York in 1973 and created Telefrance USA in 1976 owing to the lack of French-language programming on cable, in contrast to other languages that already had their programming.
[7] Baker died by suicide at his home in East Hampton, New York, on January 15, 2015, at age 71.