French singer and songwriter Jean Ferrat, seen here in 1988, died Saturday. (Jean-Marie Huron/AFP/Getty Images)

Jean Ferrat, a French singer and songwriter whose communist views saw some of his songs banned from French radio and television in the 1960s, has died at age 79.

Known as "Red Bard," Ferrat had lung cancer. Last week, he was admitted to hospital near his home in Aubenas in the south of France, where he died Saturday.

His death was prominently covered by French news media.

"One of the last giants of French music is dead," a headline in the daily Le Parisien announced Sunday.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement praising Ferrat's "unyielding conception of French song." In 2007, Ferrat called Sarkozy "un arriviste forcené" (a rabid upstart).

Michel Drucker, a popular French talk-show host and Ferrat's friend, told France Info radio that "a whole part of France, a whole generation, is mourning today."

Born Jean Tenenbaum in Paris 1930, Ferrat began his career in Left Bank cabarets. One of his earliest successes, Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog), was a tribute to his father, a Jewish émigré from Russia who was deported to Auschwitz during the Second World War.

He made his name in the 1960s and '70s with a succession of lyrical love songs and political chansons. In total, he wrote about 200 songs.

The best-known were La Montagne (The Mountain), Potemkine, Ma France and La femme est l'avenir de l'homme (Woman is the Future of Man). He was also known for his adaptations of works by the communist poet Louis Aragon.

Some of his tracks, including Potemkine and Ma France, were banned from being broadcast in the 1960s when the French government deemed them too political.

In 1967, Ferrat visited Cuba, returning with a song called Cuba si (Yes, Cuba) that described the island under Fidel Castro as "poor" but "free."

Ferrat never performed in Soviet-controlled eastern Europe and, despite this left-wing views never joined the French Communist Party. In his 1980 song, Bilan, he distanced himself from what he called "zealous Stalinists."