#49 - Edith Piaf, the sound of France

In this episode we talk about the most famous French female singer of all time. A woman whose voice inspires more than 50 years after her death. It is of course Edith Piaf, who remains in the hearts of the people of France and continues to sell huge amounts of recordings worldwide.

It is a rags to riches tale, born in the street, working the streets and finally becoming the darling of France, a legendary performer, rich beyond her wildest dreams with Marlene Dietrich as a bridesmaid at her wedding. 

Edith Piaf’s life burned bright, but short, it’s claimed her last words were “every bloody thing you do in this life, you have to pay for…” We explore her incredible life, her music and her legacy. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:28 Edith Piaf
• 12:36 Where to find us

Transcript

Podcast #49:  Edith Piaf - the sound of France

Janine: Bonjour and a big welcome to the Good Life France podcast. I’m Janine Marsh, your host and I live in Pas-de-Calais in the far north of France. I’m an author and travel writer and though I was born in London, UK, I now live in a tiny village and my home is turning into a sort of zoo! I have four dogs – Labradors Ronnie and Reggie Kray, Australian Shepherd puppies Lady Ella and Nina Simone, 6 cats, lots of chickens who all have names, ducks and geese, a rescue dove called Doris and a hedgehog called Charlie who lives on the terrace in the garden. When I’m not travelling around France, writing for my website and magazine The Good Life France or looking after my animals, I love to chat to you on this podcast alongside my podcast partner Olivier.  

Oli: Salut everyone, that’s sort of French for hi when you’re with friends. It’s more casual than “bonjour”! I’m French and I live in lovely Lyon in the south of France, the opposite end of France to Janine though for many years I lived in the UK so you may think I sound a little bit British? Non? And when I’m not chatting to Janine here, I work in the world of music and radio. So that’s us – your hosts, and now let’s get straight to today’s topic – Janine what will be exploring today?  

Janine: Today we’re going to talk about the most famous French female singer of all time. A woman whose voice inspires more than 50 years after her death. It is of course Edith Piaf. 

Oli: My favourite singer, what a voice. And what a fascinating life she had – let’s find out more.   Edith Piaf is without doubt the most famous French female singer of all time and even now more than fifty years after her death, she remains in the hearts of the people of France and continues to sell huge amounts of recordings worldwide.

Janine: Legend has it that Edith Giovanna Gassion as she was named, was born on a policeman’s cloak on the pavement outside No. 72, Rue de Belleville in the 20th arrondissement on December 19 in 1915. Allegedly her mother was alone when she went into labour, tried to get a horse driven taxi to the hospital but it was too late and two policemen passing by delivered the baby there and then on a cold winter night. With a birth like that I guess she was always destined to have a life of drama. When it comes to the life of Edith Piaf I have to say, it’s hard to know what was real and what wasn’t real about her story, there are so many accounts that differ but there’s no doubt that she had a tough start in life.

Oli: Edith had a difficult childhood. Her mother was a circus performer and singer and abandoned the baby, leaving her with her grandmother who was said to have run a bordello and liked to drink a lot of alcohol. Edith lost her sight aged three, a complication of having meningitis, and apparently the women who worked for her grandmother pooled their money together to take her on a pilgrimage to Lisieux in Normandy to pray to saint Theresa of Lisieux. Edith’s sight was restored. 

Janine: When Edith was around 12 years old, her father, who was a circus performer, an acrobat, came to take her away from her grandmother and she started to work with her father on the streets, she sang, he did acrobatics. It’s said the only song she knew at that time was the Marseillaise.

Oli: Aged 15, Edith set out on her own on the streets of Paris, around the area of Montmartre. Singing on street corners and in cafés. Life was not easy for the young woman. When she was 17, Edith had a baby girl with a delivery boy name Louis. Edith left the baby at home while she went to work and Louis took the baby away and she sadly died from meningitis aged two. Edith never had another child. 

Janine: Edith deliberately looked folorn when she sang to try to get sympathy from passers-by so that they would give more money. She was just 4 feet 8 inches tall, weighed around 90 pounds, 40kg, she was like a little waif, and looking sad worked well. She also sang in clubs and cabarets, not the expensive places then that they are now, they were for poor people, and her songs were chansons, story songs, featuring the desperate and the downtrodden, just like the people who went to the clubs, and just like her. 

In 1935, she was spotted by Louis Leplée, owner of the swanky mob-connected Le Gerny cabaret on Rue Pierre-Charron in the 8th arrondissement, and her life changed as she moved from the street to the stage. 

Oli: Edith triumphed at Le Gerny and Leplée named her La Môme Piaf” the little sparrow”. He bought her a little black dress to wear on stage and told her to keep wearing black when she performed it would be her signature look and suited the songs and her voice. And she listened, she always wore black on stage. She was a sensation at the club. Eventually she changed her stage name to Edith Piaf. She became a huge star - moving into cinema and starring in dozens of films, performing in theatre and famous music halls, winning fans with her intense and passionate singing. Her voice was husky, powerful and moving.

Janine: Edith earned lots of money and spent it as quickly as it came in – cars, houses, living the good life. She gave lots of money away to hangers on, blew a fortune on a farm. But she always looked like the little sparrow of her youth.

Oli: She symbolises the spirit of Paris and of France. Her voice and her music reached across all classes – rich and poor, she had such emotion in the words she sang, you can hear it, feel her suffering and know that she overcame it so though the songs may be sad, there’s also romance, redemption and resurrection. She became enormously popular during the Second World War; her songs of loss and heartbreak really struck a chord. She was never trained to read music and had very little education but she wrote the lyrics to some of her songs, just writing the words as they came to her. 

Janine: Well, she certainly knew about the woes of life, about being poor, being pushed to the brink, being in love and unlucky in love, abandoned and broken hearted. When people heard her sing, they knew these weren’t just empty words, she had lived the life she sang of.

Oli. And she hummed the tunes of songs to musicians who turned the sounds into musical scores. 

Janine: Edit Piaf herself wrote possibly her most famous song, and certainly one of the most popular songs of all time – La Vie en Rose, sort of life through rose-coloured glasses. It was originally called “Les Choses en Rose” but a friend suggested the name change and the rest is history. She really was a poet, the words are beautiful, we’re not allowed to play the song here, but I’ll just read a few lines: When you press me to your heart, I’m in a world apart, a world where roses bloom, and when you speak, angels sing from above, every day words seem to turn into love songs, five your heart and soul to me, and life will always be, la vie en rose.  

Oli: Her music never dates, and her voice is instantly recognisable. Her most well-known songs are La Vie en Rose, Non, Je ne regrette rien, l’Accordeoniste, Milord and Hyme a l’Amour – an ode to love. She didn’t write all her songs; some were written for her – but she felt all of them. 

Janine: It doesn’t matter where you go in France, the chances are you’ll still hear Edith’s voice. Whenever there is a party at our local town hall her voice carries across the 7 Valleys where I live, she is played at weddings, birthdays, every king of celebration - always an Edith Piaf song is played. In bars, on cruises, at markets and in restaurants. I remember sitting in a restaurant in Champagne and there was a birthday party and everyone was chatting away, it was noisy and vibrant, and then the sound of Edith singing floated through the air and it went quiet and people listened entranced. And sometimes people spontaneously sing along to the songs – she’s almost like everyone’s grandmother, people stop to think about her and her story when they hear her voice. 

Oli: Edith wasn’t loved just in France – she was an international star. She performed all around the world, sell out concerts in New York, appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show – everywhere people fell in love with the little sparrow. The newspapers were obsessed with the details of her life, the poverty of her childhood, her illnesses and addictions, her love life, the death of her greatest love the boxing champion Marcel Cerdan who died in a plane crash as he was flying to meet her. She went on to sing on stage that night, collapsing and eventually being carried off. But she wasn’t a pitiful woman, she embraced life, her songs are emotional but can be uplifting, 

Janine: Her personal life was chaotic and complicated with a series of tragedies for her and her many lovers. Someone once said that her life was so wild she makes Jim Morrison who is buried in the same cemetery as Edith, look like a conformist who got carried away on a gap year. She married twice, and at her wedding to singer Jacques Pills in 1952, Marlene Dietrich was her bridesmaid. Divorced, at the age of 46 she married a 26-year-old hairdresser called Theo Sarapo.

Oli: Edith died a year later on 10 October 1963 of liver cancer; she was just 47 years old. It’s said that her last words were “every bloody thing you do in this life, you have to pay for…” She was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery and thousands lined the funeral route to pay their respects. Edith Piaf received the highest honour from the French government when the tricolor flag was draped over her coffin. It was no empty gesture. During the second world war, she apparently helped free as many as 300 POWs at the Stalag III-D camp near Berlin, by talking the camp commander into allowing her to be photographed with all the inmates – the photos were then used to create false papers for them, crediting them as free French workers in Germany. But like much of Edith’s life story, the details of this differ according to what you read. 

Janine: A small museum in Paris commemorates her life with an exhibition of intimate belongings of the star – one of her famous little black dresses, letters, photos, shoes, toys given to her by her last husband. Mementos from the life of a legend that have been preserved by the owner of the small apartment where they are exhibited, Bernard Marchois who runs the museum in two rooms in his house in Paris met the singer when he was a teenager, an experience he never forgot and he became a lifelong fan (he allows private visits by arrangement only, at 5 rue Crespin du Gast ).

Oli: The black-clad figure of Edith Piaf moved many people and her songs and voice still move many of us deeply.

Janine: She embodied the French spirit - passionate, resilient, and deeply romantic, she is as much an icon of Paris and France as the Eiffel Tower and her voice which once echoed through the alley ways of Paris, continues to inspire.

Oli: We just want to say a huge thank you to all of you listening to our podcast and to everyone for sharing it too. We really love sharing the France we know and love with you, the authentic and real France with its wonderful history, culture, gastronomy, wine and more. It always amazes us that people are listening in about 150 countries around the world!

Janine: Yes thank you so much everyone, wherever you are, we really appreciate it. You’ve been listening to me Janine Marsh and Olivier Jauffrit. You can find Oli at parischanson.fr playing heaps of great music, and you can find me and a ton of information about France – where to visit, culture, history, recipes – everything France - at thegoodlifefrance.com where you can subscribe to the podcast, a weekly newsletter about France and my totally brilliant, completely free magazine which you can read at magazine.thegoodlifefrance.com.

But for now, it’s au revoir from me.

Olivier: And goodbye from me.

Janine: Speak to you soon!