Christian Chevallier was a pianist, arranger and bandleader who, in the mid-1950s, put together one of France's first post-war big bands in the American manner. He was born on July 12, 1930, in Angers. His father sold wine and played piano; his mother sang as an amateur. He began music lessons at eight and entered the conservatoire in Nantes in 1941, taking a second prize in piano two years later. The bombing of Nantes sent the family into the countryside, and for four years he did not touch a keyboard. He returned to music in 1947, when a friend introduced him to jazz and he heard the pianist Jack Diéval on the radio. He decided then to become a jazz musician.

At seventeen he moved to Paris and worked as a pianist in dance halls, then joined trombonist Raymond Fonsèque's band for an engagement in Biarritz. Back in Paris he played modern jazz at the Tabou with Don Byas and Bib Monville, and for a time worked Montmartre cabarets with guitarist Raymond Beau. In 1951 Juliette Gréco offered him the piano chair in the house band of the cabaret-theatre La Rose Rouge in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, replacing Henri Patterson. He stayed four years, sharing the bill with saxophonist Michel de Villers and vibraphonist Géo Daly, and finishing his nights playing jazz with Bobby Jaspar, Fats Sadi and Jimmy Gourley.

His first arrangements were written in 1953 for Géo Daly, recorded with the orchestra of alto saxophonist Tony Proteau. Requests followed from William Boucaya, Pierre Michelot and Jack Diéval, and he contributed to André Hodeir's radio programme on modern French jazz. On June 8, 1953, he married Liliane Konyn, later known as the lyricist Vline Buggy. In 1954 he presented a seven-piece group playing his own pieces at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and in the Jazz Boom revue at the Apollo theatre, and at the end of that year Henri Renaud asked him to arrange his compositions for a sextet led by Bobby Jaspar.

In 1955 the producer Pierre Hiegel introduced him to Jean-Paul Guiter, head of the jazz department at Columbia and Pathé-Marconi, and a recording career followed. After the EP Musique pour deux for Pathé, he made the 10-inch LP Big and Small for Columbia in the spring of 1955, a big-band side set against a quartet side. In October 1955 he recorded Formidable, which drew on the best soloists in Paris, among them Bobby Jaspar, Fats Sadi, Pierre Michelot and drummer Christian Garros. In 1956 it earned him the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros and the Académie du Jazz's Prix Django Reinhardt, which Jean Cocteau presented to him in June of that year; the nickname "le prince du jazz français" is credited to Cocteau. The Jazz Hot poll of January 1956 had already named him France's leading arranger and conductor, and Stan Kenton wrote warmly of the Formidable arrangements. Chevallier also wrote arrangements for Lionel Hampton. In November 1957 he recorded 6+6, a twelve-piece album that sits between a big band and a chamber orchestra, with Roger Guérin and Michelot among the players, and in 1958 Kenny Clarke recorded an EP of his compositions.

From the late 1950s the Pathé-Marconi artistic director Jacques Poissonat steered him toward song accompaniment, and he arranged, orchestrated and conducted for Line Renaud, Charles Trenet and François Deguelt, then for Charles Aznavour, Juliette Gréco, Gilbert Bécaud, Nana Mouskouri, Henri Salvador and Hugues Aufray, with a reputation for his string writing. He contributed to the music of Claude Nougaro's "Ô Toulouse". In 1959 he and Martial Solal wrote the score for Jean-Pierre Melville's film Deux hommes dans Manhattan. Through 1962 he also recorded for Columbia with the vocal group Les Angels, including jazz standards and the dance-craze record "The Madison".

In the 1980s he set up his own studio, Célia, at Savigny-sur-Orge, and his later records are mostly synthesizer and library-music albums. Wikipedia also records a 1986 suite written for the Orchestre national de jazz under François Jeanneau, involving trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. He passed away on September 14, 2008, in Évreux, Normandy. His 1955 to 1962 jazz recordings returned to print in 2016 with the Fresh Sound compilation Le Prince du jazz français and in 2023 with a three-CD set from Frémeaux & Associés that pairs the Deux hommes dans Manhattan score with his complete Columbia output.

Chevallier's jazz work is concentrated in the years 1955 to 1962. Its model was American: the Frémeaux booklet's author, Olivier Julien, describes the writing as inspired by Bill Holman and the Miles Davis nonet, and by the orchestras of Stan Kenton and Count Basie, and credits him with achieving "an American sound". The liner notes to 6+6, by André Hodeir, trace the twelve-piece writing to the Davis Capitol sessions and the light textures of Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan, while noting his taste for two- and three-part counterpoint. Formidable was made with an unusual method for France at the time: the soloists were recorded separately and placed over full-strength section tracks. Hodeir wrote that other Paris bandleaders followed with large orchestras after Chevallier's first success. After 1957 his career centred on chanson arranging, film music and later electronic and library work, so the jazz side is a distinct and earlier chapter of a wider career. In the 1950s his peers voted him France's top arranger in the Jazz Hot poll, and the 2016 and 2023 reissues have put that body of work back in circulation.