Raymond Fol was a Paris pianist, arranger and bandleader, born on April 28, 1928, in the 16th arrondissement. He grew up in a musical household and began playing piano at the age of five. His older brother Hubert Fol became an alto saxophonist and clarinettist, and the two worked together through the first years of Paris bebop. German Wikipedia lists Henri Challan, Marthe Morhange and Nadia Boulanger among his teachers.

After the war the brothers played in the band of the clarinettist Claude Abadie, which included Boris Vian; the Swing FM biography dates recordings with Abadie to 1945 and 1947. They then formed the Be Bop Minstrels, which Swing FM says recorded in November 1948. The two-CD reissue Hubert Fol and His Be-Bop Minstrels (Fresh Sound, 2018) credits Raymond on piano for "Boppin' and Oilskin", "Lover Come Back to Me", "Lover Man" and "Indiana" among other tracks, and as arranger of "Lonely Moments", "Death of the Octopus" and the two parts of "Ivory Black". English Wikipedia and Swing FM name Pierre Braslavsky and Jean-Claude Fohrenbach among his early partners, and Swing FM says he played at the opening of the Club Saint-Germain in 1949 with Fohrenbach.

From 1949 to 1953 he was in demand with the American musicians who came through Paris. English Wikipedia and Swing FM say he played with Django Reinhardt until early 1952, and the Gitanes Jazz reissue Nuits de Saint-Germain-des-Prés credits him on piano on Reinhardt's Decca sessions of May 11, 1951 and January 30, 1952, with Hubert Fol on alto saxophone and clarinet. On April 14, 1950 he was the pianist on a Swing 78 by Johnny Hodges and Harold Baker with Don Byas, and Discogs credits him as an uncredited pianist on three Roy Eldridge tracks cut in Paris on October 28, 1950. On June 28, 1950 he led his own orchestra on the 78 Ivory Black (Swing SW. 355), a piece he wrote, with Hubert on alto and Guy Longnon on trumpet. In 1952 he toured Europe with Dizzy Gillespie and is credited on piano on "Dizzy Song", recorded in Paris on March 27, 1952, and then played in the orchestra of Claude Luter behind Sidney Bechet. He is the pianist on three tracks of Bechet's Salle Pleyel concert of March 12, 1952, issued by Blue Note as Jazz Festival Concert, Paris 1952, Vol. 2, where Christian Azzi is the record's other pianist.

For several years in the middle of the 1950s he was a regular at the Club Saint-Germain, which Swing FM dates to 1954 to 1957, often accompanying visiting Americans. On November 28, 1955 he played piano at a Paris session for Chet Baker, issued in the Barclay series Chet in Paris. His first record under his own name was the Columbia EP Au Club Saint-Germain, recorded on April 13, 1956 with the bassist Michel Finet and the drummer Jean-Baptiste "Mac Kac" Reilles; Jazz Journal says he had not recorded as a leader before then. He spent time in Rome around 1958 (English Wikipedia says briefly, Swing FM says a year) and recorded there on March 26, 1959 with the trumpeter Nunzio Rotondo. Back in Paris he recorded with the tenor saxophonist Guy Lafitte in 1954, 1960, 1962 and 1963 according to Swing FM, recorded with the violinist Stéphane Grappelli in 1957 and 1969 according to Swing FM, led a trio at the Mars Club in 1961 and joined Kenny Clarke's quintet at the Club Saint-Germain in 1963.

His best-known record is Les Quatre Saisons "In Jazz" (Philips, 1965), recorded in Paris between July 9 and 15, 1965. Fol arranged Vivaldi's four concertos, conducted, and played piano and celesta in a band of 27 players by the Discogs credits, among them Johnny Griffin on tenor saxophone, Roger Guérin and Ivan Jullien on trumpets, Jean-Louis Chautemps on saxophone, Jimmy Woode on bass, Art Taylor on drums and Sadi on vibraphone. In 1972 Philips paired it with a conventional recording by Gianni De Luca, Gianna Cernuschi and Les Solistes de Saint-Marc in the double album Face à Face Vivaldi Les Quatre Saisons. The Fresh Sound compilation Rediscovering (2023) adds his Paris broadcast work of the 1960s: a session at the Théâtre des Capucines on December 7, 1964 with Donald Byrd, Hubert Fol and Art Taylor, a trio set at the ORTF in Paris on May 22, 1965, and a septet of April 22, 1967 playing his own pieces with Guérin, Maurice Thomas and Jullien on trumpets and Jean-Charles Capon on cello.

Ellington's music ran through the rest of his career: Duke Ellington's orchestra recorded Fol's composition "Salome" at its Yale concert of January 26, 1968, issued by Fantasy in 1973. German Wikipedia, citing Ellington's autobiography, says Ellington had Fol write music whenever he was in Paris, and says Fol was a guest soloist on Ellington's French tours of 1969 and 1974. He played with Ellington's saxophonist Paul Gonsalves in 1970, on the Black Lion album Just A-Sittin and A-Rockin' with Ray Nance (issued in 1973, Fol on five tracks), and in 1977 with the trumpeter Cat Anderson. In the 1970s he also recorded two solo LPs for RCA Victor, Piano (1970) and Jazz Piano Solo / Raymond Fol n°1 and n°2 (1971), and the solo album Echoes of Harlem (Blue Star, recorded June 1, 1975).

From 1975 he was a mainstay of the Blue Star and Black and Blue labels with the bassist Michel Gaudry and the drummer Sam Woodyard. With the tenor saxophonist Gérard Badini they made The Swing Machine on May 30, 1975; the trio alone recorded Duke's Moods (1977) and the session behind The Sky Was Blue, issued after his death. He is also the pianist on Lionel Hampton's Ring Dem Vibes (1976), Cat Anderson's Cat Speaks (1977) and Harold Ashby's Scufflin' (recorded May 17, 1978). In 1978 he toured Europe in a tribute to Ellington with Cat Anderson, Booty Wood, Harold Ashby, Norris Turney, Aaron Bell and Woodyard, and he last played in Germany in 1979. He passed away in Paris on May 1, 1979, at the age of 51. A festival in his name, Jazz au Mezenc, was founded by Jean-Paul and Chloé Valois at Matagot near Chaudeyrolles in the Haute-Loire, the area where German Wikipedia says he had his home.

Reviewing Rediscovering in Jazz Journal, Matthew Wright hears Duke Ellington and Bud Powell in his trio playing, in the sparse left-hand chords, the middle-register solos and the melodic runs, with occasional touches of Thelonious Monk, and finds a more exploratory approach by 1960. German Wikipedia names Fats Waller, Erroll Garner and Ellington as influences and describes him as an arranger in the Ellington tradition. The compiler Jordi Pujol writes that his melodic, swinging style suited traditional, mainstream and modern jazz alike, and that his modesty kept him from the wider fame of contemporaries such as Martial Solal and René Urtreger. The record bears that range out: bebop with his brother in 1948, the Bechet and Luter concerts of 1952, the Gillespie tour and Chet Baker's Paris session, then Ellington repertoire in the 1970s. His own tunes "Circeo", "Lazy Lady Daisy", "Ro-Ma-No" and "Out of Art" recur across the broadcasts and sessions of 1956 to 1967, and the Vivaldi arrangement is his one large-scale work on record.