Édith Piaf
Édith Piaf (1915–'63) was and still is France's most beloved singer, a child of the streets whose place in her country's lore is not unlike Judy Garland's is in the U.S.A. A documentary called I Regret Nothing, named after one of her most famous songs, aired on PBS stations and brought Piaf into millions of American living rooms, gaining new fans for the small figure with the enormous heartbreaking voice. Even people who understood neither her native language nor the culture she represented couldn't resist Piaf's visceral yet polished assault on their emotions; for them, even to this day, Edith Piaf is France.
She was born as Édith Giovanna Gassion to an Italian café chanteuse and an itinerant acrobat father. Her parents pretty much abandoned the child to her grandmother's care, but after World War I Piaf returned to Paris where she and her father joined forces for a time; he did his act while she passed the cup. But by her mid-teens Piaf realized the power of her voice and struck out with her friend Simone (aka Momone) to try her luck as a street singer. An early romance produced a short-lived and deeply mourned daughter but she kept active on the circuit, performing for anyone who might toss her few coins. One cold day as she sang on a street corner in Pigalle, Louis Leplée, the director of a fashionable cabaret on the Champs Elysées, heard her. He immediately hired Piaf and soon, dressed in the first of many little black dresses, the young headliner was billed as La Môme Piaf, street slang for "The Little Sparrow." Leplée also helped her cut a single in 1936 but after he was murdered later that year, Piaf was among those brought in for questioning. She was eventually cleared but the ensuing scandal wasted precious time.
In 1940, now known simply as Édith Piaf, she fell in love with the French actor Paul Meurisse. During their two-year affair, he taught her about French culture and how to behave in polite society. She was now moving in high-powered circles: Jean Cocteau, a future close friend, wrote a play for her and she took up with a new lover, Henri Contet, who would compose many of her hit records. During the war years, she defiantly hired Jewish musicians and labored behind-the-scenes for the French Resistance. Incongruously, she composed her signature song, the rosily optimistic "La Vie en Rose" (which was voted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame in 1998) amid the Nazi occupation of Paris. In the mid-'40s, Piaf helped to launch the career of an Italian-born singer from Marseilles named Yves Montand and later guided the careers of Charles Aznavour, Eddie Constantine and Georges Moustaki. This became a pattern with her: Becoming romantically involved with callow but talented singers and songwriters, educating them about how to dress and present themselves on stage before moving on.
After WWII ended, Piaf began to tour the world. Conquering New York took some effort but she ultimately appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show eight times. This was the city where Piaf met her lifelong friend Marlene Dietrich and the Algerian-born boxing champion Marcel Cerdan, who was the great love of her life. Piaf's classic ballad "L'Hymne à L'Amour," composed with her longtime collaborator Marguerite Monnot, dates from this happy period, which came to an abrupt end when Cerdan was killed in a plane crash. Although resilient, Piaf never entirely rallied from this blow; she tried to contact him via mediums and spiritualists and channeled her grief into over-the-top material.
In 1951, while recovering from two car crashes, Piaf became addicted to morphine, which, when combined with her already well-established dependence on alcohol, gradually eroded her mental and physical well being. She attempted to wean herself off both drugs but inexorably lost ground. Even so, following a reclusive break, she was seemingly in the best form of her life. In 1955 she performed triumphant, standing-room-only performances at L'Olympia, the most legendary Paris concert venue. Despite her waning health, she then set off upon an extensive tour of the U.S.A.
In 1958, Piaf, accompanied by Georges Moustaki, suffered through yet another serious car crash, but refused to cancel her bookings; a few months later, while on tour in New York, she collapsed in the middle of a concert and was rushed to a hospital for emergency surgery. By now, her friends were begging her to retire for her own good, but even though her on-stage fainting spells continued, she refused to give up her music. In 1960, a young songwriter named Charles Dumont gave Piaf an anthem called "Non Je Ne Regrette Rien" ("I Regret Nothing"), which was to become inextricably associated with her. She debuted the tune at a 1961 fund-raiser for L'Olympia, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, and that night's performance was among her most transcendent. In June of the same year, Piaf was awarded the Prix du Disque de L'Académie Charles-Cros—the equivalent of a Grammy but with stronger cultural overtones—for her many outstanding contributions to her nation's music.
In 1962 Piaf married an unknown Greek singer by the name of Theophanis Lamboukas, known as Theo Sarapo, and despite his being many years her junior he appeared very devoted to her. The couple recorded a famous duet called "A Quoi Ca Sert L'Amour" in which a youth asks an older woman the meaning of love and receives her patient, philosophical replies.
Attended to by the faithful Sarapo, Piaf spent the last months of her life at her villa near Cannes, finally dying on October 11, 1963, the same day as her old friend Jean Cocteau. Thousands of Parisians followed the small casket to Père Lachaise cemetery, where it is still one of the most visited graves in this last resting place of Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt and Jim Morrison.
Piaf's songs have been covered by Louis Armstrong, Johnny Hallyday, Serge Gainsbourg, Liza Minnelli and Etienne Daho but Charles Aznavour's 1993 reworking of "Plus Bleu Que Tes Yeux," in which he spars with Piaf's own electronically added voice, is fitting tribute to his beloved friend. —Christina Roden