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| The Immortal Edith Piaf - The Little Sparrow (2CD) |
| Édith Piaf |
első megjelenés éve: 1953
148 perc |
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| (2008)
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2 x CD |
| 3.796 Ft
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| 1. CD tartalma: |
| 1. | L'Etranger
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| 2. | Il N'est Pas Distingué
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| 3. | J'Suis Mordue
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| 4. | Mon Légionnaire
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| 5. | Le Contrabandier
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| 6. | Mon Coeur Est Au Coin D'Une Rue
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| 7. | Le Grand Voyage Du Pauvre N&
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| 8. | Elle Fréquentait La Rue Pigalle
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| 9. | Les Deux Copains
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| 10. | Le Petit Monsieur Triste
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| 11. | Dans Un Bouge Du Vieux Port
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| 12. | L'Accordéoniste
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| 13. | Embrasse-Moi
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| 14. | C'Était Un Jour De Féte
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| 15. | C'est Un Monsieur Tr&
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| 16. | Le Vagabond
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| 17. | J'ai Dansé Avec L'Amour
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| 18. | C'Était Une Histoire D'Amour
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| 19. | Tu Est Partout
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| 20. | Le Brun Et Le Blond
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| 21. | Regardez-Moi Tojours Comme Ça
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| 22. | Les Cloches Sonnet
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| 2. CD tartalma: |
| 1. | La Vie En Rose
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| 2. | Adieu Mon Coeur
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| 3. | Dans Les Prisons De Nantes
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| 4. | Les Trios Cloches
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| 5. | Les Amants De Paris
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| 6. | Bal Dans Ma Rue
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| 7. | La Féte Continue
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| 8. | Le Chevalier De Paris
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| 9. | L'Hymne &
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| 10. | Il Y Avait
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| 11. | Je Hais Les Dimanches
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| 12. | Jézébel
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| 13. | Rien De Rien
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| 14. | La Rue Aux Chansons
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| 15. | La Valase D'Amour
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| 16. | Á L'Enseigner De La Fille Sans Coeur
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| 17. | La Chanson De Catherine
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| 18. | Chante-Moi
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| 19. | Elle A Dit
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| 20. | Je T'Ai Dans La Peau
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| 21. | Ça Ira
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| 22. | Les Amants De Venise
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| 23. | Bravo Pour Le Clown
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Jazz
Nicknamed The Little Sparrow, Edith Piaf grew from a frail street singer to a proud icon of French culture. The Immortal Edith Piaf follows her career through those unique recordings where the naked emotion of her singing overwhelmed all who heard her.
Edith Piaf was born in 1915 in Belleville, a poor district of Paris which she forever regarded as her spiritual home, and she became closely identified with the vibrant creative spirit of the city in the 1930s and 40s. Paris at that time was the intellectual and artistic centre of the world, home to composers Ravel and Stravinsky, artists Matisse, Leger and Picasso and writers Proust, Gide and Cocteau. The latter, indeed, became utterly absorbed by Piaf and described her impact on him with unalloyed wonder: "Every time she sings you have the feeling she's wrenching her soul from her body for the last time." When he learned of her death in 1963 he exclaimed: "Ah, Piaf est morte, je peux mourir", and died himself within hours.
In the 21st century in St.Germain-des-Pres, an entire wall of graffiti remains covered with extravagant homages to another compellingly rebellious chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg, over a decade after his death. Gainsbourg came to be considered less in the tradition of conventional chanson than as a descendant from the lineage of darker writing found in Baudelaire's The Flowers Of Evil and Rimbaud's A Season In Hell. He distanced himself from the sunny optimism of genteel singers like Chevalier and Trenet by disdaining chanson as "a minor art", and Piaf too similarly transcended the formality of French popular song with raw emotion and an untamed defiance. She rose from a traumatic childhood of dire poverty fully to exploit the extraordinary natural talent which was to make her France's greatest cultural icon and its highest-paid star.
One of roguish travelling acrobat Louis Gassion's twentysomething children, Edith's dissolute mother, street singer Line Marsa, quickly abandoned her and she was then sent to live with her kindly mother-in-law who ran a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. Before the age of ten, however, she had recovered from years of blindness and rejoined her father, touring the provinces in a caravan and once singing a stirring version of La Marseillaise for money to pay off debts. At fifteen she returned to Belleville and began her life as a singer, begging in the streets and sometimes sleeping rough. She became pregnant in 1932 but lost her baby immediately through meningitis; in the following year she sang regularly at the Juan-les-Pins, a seedy nightclub in Pigalle, and was stalked and shot at by a pimp disgruntled by her refusal to become a prostitute.
Piaf's early repertoire was dominated by the songs of Maryse Damia, an impassioned artist known as La Tragedienne De La Chanson who had recorded an interpretation of Gloomy Sunday to rival Billie Holiday's, and was also noted for performing dressed entirely in black. Piaf herself adopted this style years before Juliette Greco and the 1950s existentialists emulated the same dress code at Le Tabou, a fashion perpetuated ever since by less intellectual movements.
In September 1935 Edith Piaf's luck changed when she was spotted singing a Damia song on a street corner by influential adventurer Louis Leplee, a colourful figure with connections in both high society and the underworld who owned an exclusive, upmarket club called Gerny's. It was Leplee who gave her the name Piaf, Parisian slang for the sparrow-like appearance which so captivated him and which made such an impression on the audience at his cabaret venue when she made her debut at his instigation. Her performance transfixed the crowd and unprecedented adulation was soon to be consolidated when she discovered a new song, L'Etranger.
CD1
1. L'Etranger
2. Il N'Est Pas Distingue
3. J'Suis Mordue
4. Mon Legionnaire
5. Le Contrabandier
6. Mon Coeur Est Au Coin D'Une Rue
Recorded in 1936 - 1937
L'Etranger was a poem about an alienated sailor who could only find peace at sea, written by Robert Malleron and adapted by Margurite Monnot, a young composer who had studied under legendary pianist Alfred Cortot and who was to become a close musical associate for many years. Although rival Annette Lajon won a Grand Prix Du Disque with the song, Piaf's recording was stunning and led to a prestigious concert appearance alongside Damia and Maurice Chevalier which attracted much attention. Her patron Leplee was then mysteriously murdered two months later, resulting in a scandal which implicated Piaf as a suspect, thereby causing her to lose many of her friends. Although instantly something of a success with regular radio appearances, she needed, and received, the full support of Monnot and was also fortunate to become acquainted with the talented writer Raymond Asso. After her 1936 recording of Il N'Est Pas Distingue - an anti-Hitler song cleverly disguised in wartime by a heavy Belleville accent - and J'Suis Mordue, the following year gave her a significant breakthrough when Asso collaborated with Monnot on one of her most enduring successes, Mon Legionnaire. Piaf had previously sung at an army barracks and developed a lifelong passion for men in uniform, so felt particularly at ease with the exotic melodrama of this composition, just as she did with Asso's equally romantic portrait of a sympathetic outsider character, Le Contrabandier. These songs led to recognition from the ABC, then the most famous Parisian music hall of all, and marked the beginning of her legend.
7. Le Grand Voyage Du Pauvre Negre
8. Elle Frequentait La Rue Pigalle
9. Les Deux Copains
10. Le Petit Monsieur Triste
11. Dans Un Bouge Du Vieux Port
12. L'Accordeoniste
13. Embrasse-Moi
Recorded in 1938 - 1940
Raymond Asso's first impression of Piaf was of "a Spanish beggar, proud and scornful and at the same time timid and frightened." He became her Svengali, teaching her much about performance and also falling in love with her, as so many did. She could never remain faithful herself for very long and their relationship foundered despite his dedication to providing songs perfectly suited to the intensity of her personality, particularly with Elle Frequentait La Rue Pigalle and Le Petit Monsieur Triste. She then lived with the socially ambitious Paul Meurisse, whose aspirations did not suit her earthy instincts, before becoming feted by Paris's intelligentsia through her friendship with Jean Cocteau, who promoted her as "the poet of the streets" and wrote a successful play, Le Bel Indifferent, especially for her.
As the war approached, Maurice Chevalier wrote in 1939 that he was "sure Hitler was bluffing", before hearing on the radio that Germany had invaded Poland. "Now golf was out of the question", he lamented, adding that "terrible things were happening but Parisians don't really care about anything but Paris." On 14 June 1940, however, the swastika was unfurled over the Arc De Triomphe and the years of Occupation began. Piaf met another composer at this time, Michael Emer, who played her his melancholy love song L'Accordeoniste, and her recording of it gave her her greatest triumph thus far, selling over a million copies. In the same year, 1940, she also made Embrasse-Moi, an affecting story based on a poem by Jacques Prevert about the plight of destitute children.
14. C'Etait Un Jour De Fete
15. C'Est Un Monsieur Tres Distingue
16. Le Vagabond
17. J'Ai Danse Avec L'Amour
18. C'Etait Une Histoire D'Amour
19. Tu Es Partout
20. Le Brun Et Le Blond
21. Regardez-Moi Toujours Comme Ca
22. Les Cloches Sonnent
Recorded in 1941 - 1945
The war years saw the beginning of a period when Piaf started to create more songs for herself, specifically tailored to her own character. C'Etait Un Jour De Fete proved a popular release with music again by Monnot, and she tasted more success with J'Ai Danse Avec L'Amour and Tu Es Partout, using the same partner for both to provide material for the George Lacombe movie Montmartre-Sur-Seine. She also began a relationship with the journalist Henri Contet, who wrote some of her most accessible material during a highly creative period. Despite the war and the privations of Occupation, France witnessed something of a golden age for hedonistic entertainment between 1941 and 1945, when music halls and cinemas flourished with record-breaking attendances. 1942's lively Le Vagabond was the start of the vintage Piaf years which lasted through to the early 50s when her drink and drug addictions eventually began to destroy her health and creative spark. In wartime, though, she became established as a patriotic symbol loved obsessively for her unyielding ardour, dramatic songs and clandestine work for the Resistance. She avoided persecution from the Gestapo partly through their fondness for her friends in the local brothels (especially the infamous Madame Billy's where she lived undisturbed) and also their enjoyment of her singing. Contet's songs C'Etait Une Histoire D'Amour and Le Brun Et Le Blond contributed significantly to Piaf's status and by 1945 she was being paid as much in one evening as an average worker earned in a whole year.
CD2:
1. La Vie En Rose
2. Adieu Mon Coeur
3. Dans Les Prisons De Nantes
4. Les Trois Cloches
Recorded in 1946
Piaf had by now, of course, become a star at the Moulin Rouge and it was there that she encountered the young Yves Montand. She made the movie many consider her best, Etoile Sans Lumiere, which together with Montand proved a huge worldwide success not least in America where her burgeoning reputation led her to tour on ten occasions. The Great Piaf, as she had now become, signed for Pathe-Marconi in 1946 and also recorded La Vie En Rose, a self-penned landmark song which proved massively important for her at the time and was later reprised in 1985 by admiring diva Grace Jones. Piaf then went on tour with Les Compagnons De La Chanson, a nine-strong ensemble of harmony singers specializing in French folklore featuring three tenor, three bass and three baritone voices. Together they recorded Les Trois Cloches, a haunting a cappella song with a quasi-religious atmosphere which became a significant favourite, translated into English as The Jimmy Brown Song and included in the movie Neuf Garcons Et Un Coeur. It sold 60,000 copies within three weeks, highly unusual at the time.
5. Les Amants De Paris
6. Bal Dans Ma Rue
7. La Fete Continue
8. Le Chevalier De Paris
9. L'H'ymne A L'Amour
Recorded in 1948 - 1950
In 1947 Piaf travelled to the USA with Les Compagnons De La Chanson but American audiences were initially nonplussed by her starkly uncompromising act which confounded their expectations of some traditional Gallic romanticism. The New York Times theatre critic Virgil Thompson put them straight: "Miss Piaf presents the art of the chansonnier at its most classical. There is apparently not a nerve in her body. Neither is there any pretext of relaxation. She is not tense, but intense." The glamorous Versailles cabaret club quickly saw her win over the more discerning public, paid her $1,000 a week and there she met the leading show business legends of the day; she was largely unimpressed, save for Marlene Dietrich who became a close friend and recorded Le Chevalier De Paris (the Piaf song originally released in 1950) as a tribute in the 60s, just months before The Little Sparrow's death. Michael Emer contributed the optimistic Bal Dans Ma Rue and the evocative fairground drama La Fete Continue for her during this period, but the era's most significant personal event was Piaf's love affair with Marcel Cerdan. "Before him I was nothing. I believed that life had no meaning and that all men were animals. Marcel taught me how to live again." The champion boxer became the love of her life and she even persuaded him to read Andre Gide's L'Immoraliste in an effort to wean him away from his cultural preferences for Tarzan and Walt Disney. She was working at a furious pace, too, both in Paris and New York, and Cerdan's career peaked in 1948 when he won a world title only to lose to "Raging Bull" Jake La Motta a year later. In October 1949, due to come back for the return fight from training in Europe, Cerdan's plane crashed in the Azores with no survivors. Piaf never truly recovered - having urged him to make his journey quickly by plane, which he hated, to assuage her loneliness - and 1950's L'Hymne A L'Amour was an unbearably poignant song she wrote in his memory. Undoubtedly one of her finest moments it is a heartfelt personal anthem, was featured in the 1951 movie Paris Chante Toujours! and sold several million copies. With English words by Geoffrey Parsons, it was also a 1954 hit in America for Kay Starr.
10. Il Y Avait
11. Je Hais Les Dimanches
12. Jezebel
13. Rien De Rien
14. La Rue Aux Chansons
15. La Valse D'Amour
16. A L'Enseigner De La Fille Sans Coeur
17. Le Chanson De Catherine
18. Chante-Moi
Recorded in 1950-1951
1950 saw the beginning of Piaf's friendship with Charles Aznavour, a personal relationship which lasted all her life and a brief musical liaison which produced several important hits for her. The established singer and the unknown young writer bonded immediately and she happily chose to perform his Il Y Avait and Rien De Rien, the latter included in her successful musical comedy vehicle La P'tite Lili. Aznavour also adapted Jezebel, a flamboyant song by Wayne Franklin which Frankie Laine made into a huge pop hit in both America and the UK and which Piaf clearly relished. He also suggested she sing his Je Hais Les Dimanches which she rejected at first, only to relent when Juliette Greco enjoyed a great success with it, provoking Piaf to demonstrate how she considered it should really be performed.
1951 was a prolific year away from Aznavour songs, too, highlighted by Emer's La Rue Aux Chansons and Le Chanson De Catherine, the lesser-known doomy tale of suicide which won her the prize of Concours De Deauville, and the only slightly less mournful A L'Enseigner De La Fille Sans Coeur. She also suffered two car crashes in July and August of that year which led ultimately to her destructive dependence on morphine, initially prescribed innocently as a painkiller for her injuries.
19. Elle A Dit
20. Je T'Ai Dans La Peau
21. Ca Ira
22. Les Amants De Venise
23. Bravo Pour Le Clown
Recorded in 1952 - 1953
1952 gave Piaf a belated Grand Prix Du Disque for her earlier recording of Le Chevalier De Paris which had been revived in English by Peggy Lee, and also provided her with her first husband Jacques Pills who laboured under the soubriquet of "Monsieur Charm". In that year Pills completed a collaboration with pianist Francois Silly (who soon, understandably, changed his name to Gilbert Becaud) on the heartbreaker Elle A Dit, and Becaud also adapted Piaf's own Je T'Ai Dans La Peau, a song with an unusually suggestive flavour. Piaf recorded both and the latter appeared in the movie Boum Sur Paris! in which she starred with Juliette Greco and Tino Rossi; another movie, Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles M'Etait Conte featured the very different revolutionary song Ca Ira, and achieved record receipts attracted by its stars Orson Welles, Claudette Colbert, Jean Marais, Rossi and of course Piaf herself.
Two more 1953 recordings close this collection with Les Amants De Venise - set not in Venice but in Paris where poor Italians yearn for their homeland - and the quintessential Bravo Pour Le Clown, the tragic story of a clown who kills his wife and is sent to a mental institution. Piaf always performed this with studied conviction and, amid the cries of Bravo! Bravo!, raised her arms upwards in an emphatic theatrical gesture.
Edith Piaf married again, briefly to the youthful Theo Sarapo for the year up to her death, as her final decade saw declining health but continued adulation sustained by the achievements of Milord, a song by her friend Georges Moustaki, and most of all by Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, her living epitaph. She had always declined offers to appear in the UK - reasoning in an interview that "I don't think the British understand about falling in love" - but plans had been made for her to sing in the US again, this time for President Kennedy late in 1963: both, of course, died before the concert could take place. In convalescence near Cap Ferrat just before the end, she was also rehearsing without completing Je M'En Remets A Toi, a song written by Jacques Brel which he never recorded out of respect for her.
Piaf died on 10 October 1963 in Plascassier, near Grasse, but her body was transported immediately to Paris so that her death could be registered there, more appropriately. On a trip to America she had once been taken to see Niagara Falls but dismissed it as "just a lot of water", feeling a far greater emotional affinity with Belleville or Pigalle. Paris mourned her death unreservedly.
Neil Kellas
Based in Greenwich, South London, Neil Kellas is a freelance compiler and music writer responsible for over 400 CDs. |
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