By then Piaf had formed the team that would bolster her professional life. Emer put her in touch with a classically trained musician named Robert Chauvigny, who signed an exclusive contract as her accompanist and would compose the music for many of her songs. When Chauvigny brought the accordionist Marc Bonel as a possible addition to the orchestra, Piaf hesitated because he could not read music, but changed her mind once Bonel learned all of her songs by heart. In November 1945, she had met Louis Barrier, who worked in the Office Parisien du Spectacle (Paris entertainment bureau). With her usual acumen, she saw that he was the kind of person she could rely on and asked him to be her manager. After some hesitation, he agreed. Chauvigny, Bonel, and Barrier would stay with Piaf for the rest of her career, providing the stability and devotion that she required of her entourage.
Although the fractious French parties had recently formed the National Constituent Assembly, the body that would write the Fourth Republic’s constitution, the postwar political scene had not yet stabilized. De Gaulle’s election as head of government had been unanimous, but he was unhappy with the near majority of old left-wing parties. In January 1946, believing he could not govern, he resigned. Materially, France was hardly better off than under the Occupation; beans and lentils were imported from South America to compensate for dwindling supplies of French grain.
By the time Edith went on tour in January, the franc had plummeted and thousands of Parisians had the flu. She sang first in Besançon, where the management could not pay her, then in Saint Moritz, Switzerland, and other winter resorts. Changing venues daily was tiring, she told Bourgeat, but it was beautiful in the Alps, “mountains of snow and a grand silence.” She asked for news of a certain “chou-fleur” (Montand) and told Bourgeat to get her records back from “that big mug.” The press and the diplomatic corps treated her “like a little queen,” she continued. “That’s why I no longer have the right to be ignorant; people here take me seriously and I must do the same!” Each book Bourgeat sent gave her joy. Men could be disappointing, but she had found “other satisfactions” in all she had learned since Jacquot first introduced her to the classics. She ended with the hope that her prose showed the benefits of his ongoing tutelage.
A few days later, in Lausanne, Piaf made the discovery that would lead to the next phase of her career. Barrier had booked her at a cabaret run by a prewar acquaintance named Jean Villard who had performed with her at the A.B.C. under his stage name, Gilles. Edith’s old friend offered her his recent composition “Les Trois Cloches,” which sounded like a modern version of the traditional folk music that had become popular during the Occupation—when the Vichy government promoted an idyllic vision of village culture. Piaf took “Les Trois Cloches” back to Paris, almost certain that she would sing it, but not on her own.
In addition to the widespread enthusiasm for American jazz, which came to seem like a form of resistance under the Nazis (they dismissed it as degenerate), many postwar audiences responded to the revival of songs of the kind they called folklorique. While urban youth, especially the defiant Paris crowd known as les zazous, flocked to the dark basement jazz clubs on the Left Bank, their counterparts in the provinces appreciated clean-cut choralists like Les Compagnons de la Chanson, eight young singers whose old-fashioned harmonies were helping to restore popular taste for the traditional French repertoire.
Edith met Les Compagnons at a benefit for French railway workers, when she expressed her interest in them despite their “boy-scout-like” style. “They lacked experience,” she recalled, “but youth is a charming defect.… One didn’t have to be a crystal-gazer to see that they had great potential.” On her return to Paris, she began thinking of ways to put behind her the image of “the poor little môme.” It came to her in April, during an army-sponsored tour of eastern France and Germany with Les Compagnons de la Chanson. Though she was touched by their freshness (the oldest was twenty-six), she told them that they would never achieve success with their current repertoire. But when she offered them “Les Trois Cloches,” they turned it down—until she proposed to sing it with them.
In May, Piaf orchestrated the campaign to launch the group in Paris, the first step on what would become an international career. While singing at the Club des Cinq, she rehearsed “Les Trois Cloches” to heighten the play between their crystalline tones and her dark timbre. On May 10, Les Compagnons auditioned for Columbia, which had just recorded Piaf’s score from Etoile sans lumière (the film was a big success).
The next night, she and the group performed at the Club des Cinq. Jean Cocteau, who at Edith’s request was present, was so moved by their performance that he wrote a hymn of praise to “the strange marriage of Madame Edith Piaf and the young crew.” In his view, “their twin solitudes combine to make a sonorous whole in which la France is so touchingly expressed that it brings tears to our eyes.” Singing a cappella, Les Compagnons replaced the orchestra while forming an honor guard around their costar, whose incandescent tones echoed in their harmonies. It was as if the fragile figure in black had gathered these youths to protect her, yet once she began to sing, her intuitive sense of their rapport carried them. Les Compagnons were, Cocteau concluded, “the treeful of music” that gave shelter to France’s “nightingale.”
By June, Piaf was also finding support in her rapport with the group’s leader, Jean-Louis Jaubert. Like Montand, Jaubert was nearly five years younger than she was, but, unlike his predecessor, he was not likely to become her rival. An Alsatian Jew who had survived the war under a false name, he had the gift of making Edith laugh. From Nice, where she had a week’s engagement, she told Bourgeat of her hope to resume their “lessons” on her return to Paris and of her happiness with Jaubert. “I’m sure that I really love him,” she continued, “and also sure that he won’t disappoint me since he has never lied.… I’ll finally be able to be what I’ve always wanted to be, a good woman, one in whom a man can place his trust.”
Those who knew Piaf well, like Contet, had doubts about her ability to be faithful. In his view, what mattered most for her was la chanson. “Words and music are her beloved slaves,” he wrote in May. “Miraculously they submit because of her passion. She loves them as much as the earth loves the rain.” With great respect and affection, he described the one way in which Piaf was always faithful: “She sleeps with her songs, she warms them, she clasps them to her.… They possess her.”
CHAPTER NINE
1946–1948
Piaf’s affection for Jaubert would wax and wane during the next two years, but her belief in Les Compagnons’ ability to revitalize la chanson française did not waver. After the deeply demoralizing years of the Occupation, it seemed imperative to renew French cultural life, and, for Edith, to secure her image as the country’s “nightingale”—Cocteau having promoted her from sparrow status to divalike stature.
To understand her enthusiasm for Les Compagnons, we must imagine the postwar ambience. It may be difficult for English-speakers who first heard “Les Trois Cloches” as “Jimmy Brown” to picture the tonic effect of its (to our ears) insipid lyrics or to grasp its resonance in 1946, when the song’s ringing tones impressed even jaded Parisians. Though Vichy had encouraged chorales as effective propaganda, church choirs, Boy Scouts, and other singing groups had adopted the traditional repertoire on its own merits. Les Compagnons’ success in bringing this form to music-hall audiences relied on their clean-cut image and transparent harmonies. By conjuring up the ideals of la France profonde, where people’s lives unfolded to the sound of church bells, Les Compagnons took on the aura of a village choir. “In the troubled post-Liberation period,” a historian writes, “these harmonies resonated forcefully, then gradually diminished, like the echo of a world in retreat, soon evoking no more than a nostalgic dream of serenity for numerous city-dwellers.”
This nostalgic dream still captivated the French imagination in 1946, when reassuring visions of a more harmonious life were an antidote to the war years. On tour with Les Compag
nons in April, Piaf found that she too liked certain folk songs. One night, when the group was performing a particularly sad one entitled “Céline,” she surprised them by singing the part of the heroine, whose sweetheart returns from the war to learn of her death, then hears her angelic voice pledge that they will meet again. This inspired moment became part of their program, as did Edith’s impromptu drumming when they sang another folk song, “Le Roi fait battre tambour.” But although she saw the importance of keeping some traditional songs, she urged them to “modernize,” to sing tunes that could become popular, “and, naturally, love songs.”
To help them make the transition, Edith gave the group “La Marie,” which had been written for her but would have been better suited to the voice of a man reassuring his beloved of their future. Soon lyricists began composing songs for Les Compagnons. The poet Blaise Cendrars gave them “La Complainte de Mandrin,” the ballad of a Robin Hood–like brigand; Jacques Bourgeat wrote “Les Vieux Bateaux” for Edith and the group; and Raymond Asso later gave them “Comme un petit coquelicot.” Their popularity with Parisian audiences confirmed Piaf’s intuition that she and Les Compagnons would go far together. When they added a third baritone, she arranged for a series of joint radio broadcasts entitled Neuf Garçons et un coeur—with herself as the choral group’s “heart.”
For the next two years, Les Compagnons took part in all her major tours, performances, and recording sessions. Piaf included them in benefits for French prisoners of war and for the children of her adopted stalag. They sang with her on May 16 at the vast Palais de Chaillot, where she had the backing of a sixty-piece orchestra and the imprimatur of Cocteau, whose hymn to Piaf’s “génie” (read by the master of ceremonies) gives a sense of the adulation with which she was now received.
“Madame Edith Piaf is a genius,” Cocteau’s text began. “There has never been anyone like her; there never will be.” The audience was directed to study “this astonishing little person … her Bonaparte-like forehead, her eyes like those of a blind person trying to see” as she came onstage. After a moment of hesitation, “a voice rises up from deep within, a voice that inhabits her from head to toe, unfolding like a wave of warm black velvet to submerge us, piercing through us, getting right inside us. The illusion is complete. Edith Piaf, like an invisible nightingale on her branch, herself becomes invisible. There is just her gaze, her pale hands, her waxen forehead catching the light, and the voice that swells, mounts up, and gradually replaces her.”
To perform with a star of this magnitude was a huge gift to Les Compagnons. Fred Mella, the lead tenor, was in awe of Piaf’s strength and determination but also of her respect for the audience. (“I cannot allow any rudeness toward my public,” she told a general who made them late on their army tour.) Edith soon felt completely at home with her youthful entourage. Like them, their “big sister” loved to laugh, Mella recalled. At times they harmonized in the Métro, “to the grand astonishment of the passengers, who couldn’t believe their eyes and ears.”
“She thought of herself as the tenth compagnon,” Jean-Louis Jaubert said. “With us she was a big kid misbehaving with her pals,” who were not above pinching her bottom as she went onstage. Though Jaubert was her favorite, she played tricks on him as well. But once they began rehearsing, “she gave herself completely,” he added, “even though she was a star.” Edith made Les Compagnons work as hard as she did, rehearsing harmonies and intonations until they were perfect.
In Paris, they often performed at the Club des Cinq—by 1946, the place to hear le swing. One walked through a courtyard and down a few steps to the large basement room where Michel Emer’s orchestra might be playing “In the Mood” or the latest tune by Benny Goodman. Patrons returned to their tables by ten, when the deep-burgundy curtains parted and Piaf came onstage. One evening, Montand showed up to watch her sing with Les Compagnons. Another night Marcel Cerdan came with his friend Jo Longman, who asked Edith to join them after the show. Cerdan, dazzled by her presence, said how much he liked her voice. When she ordered tomato juice, he followed suit—as if his table had become hers. Some months later, the day before he impressed New York boxing fans by defeating Georgie Abrams at Madison Square Garden, Edith cabled, “Know that all of Paris is with you. And that little Piaf sends you a piece of her heart.”
Piaf’s feelings for Jaubert had already begun to waver, but not because of Cerdan. She flew to Athens on August 31 for a three-week solo stint at the oddly named Miami Club. “It began very badly,” she recalled. “I arrived in time for the elections. People were quite nervous, and when the Greeks get nervous, they do it in a big way.” The country’s focus on the plebiscite, which would end the recent civil war by bringing back the monarchy, made it hard for audiences to respond until a journalist dubbed Piaf “la chanteuse de poche.” Though the French-speaking Athenians warmed to the “pocket-sized singer” once the election was over, Edith told Bourgeat that she disliked “the heat, the climate, how people think, their greasy cuisine and dirty corridors. I have neither your wisdom nor that of Plato or Socrates.” She would feel better with Jacquot there, though he too might be dismayed by the contrast between ancient Greece and the modern state.
Edith found that Athens did have something to offer when she met a handsome actor named Dimitris (“Takis”) Horn, who showed her the Acropolis by moonlight and taught her to say “I love you” in Greek—a phrase she remembered as “sarapo.” She became enamored of Takis on the spot. His proposal of marriage moved her, despite the fact that he already had a wife, whom he promised to divorce. Just before boarding the plane to Paris, Edith gave him the Saint Thérèse medal she had worn since childhood as a keepsake. The writer Edmonde Charles-Roux, her seatmate on the plane, did her best to comfort Edith—who sobbed all the way home, certain that she had lost the love of her life.
“I love you as I have never loved anyone, Takis,” she wrote Horn on September 20. “I think that I could really make you happy and that I understand you very well. I know I could give up everything for you.” Takis was to reply care of Dédée Bigard, who would give Edith his letters. Soon she was besieging him with telegrams. It is not known whether they met again. Within a few years, Horn was enjoying a successful career in the movies, including some in which he sang the sort of love songs that delighted Edith.
Despite her emotional distress, Edith joined Les Compagnons as planned on a tour of the provinces that autumn. (One wonders what she told Jaubert about Athens.) The singers polished their repertoire before enthusiastic audiences in provincial capitals, then returned to Paris for a six-week engagement at L’Etoile. At first all went well. Edith gave an opening-night reception to introduce Les Compagnons to a select group of friends—Jean-Louis Barrault, Madeleine Renaud, Marcel Carné, René Clair, and Maurice Chevalier. Ticket sales exceeded all previous records; the press reported her plans to keep broadcasting with Les Compagnons and noted the star’s bond with her public: “If a song is good and you put your heart into it,” she told a journalist, audiences would not think about their problems. “That’s our mission as singers,” she explained, “to make people forget for three hours that they even exist.”
That autumn, Piaf showed her dedication by multiplying broadcasts and engagements. On several occasions she lost her voice. Friends stepped in to replace her, including Montand, whose name was still linked with hers in the press. After an article about their affair appeared in Cinévogue, Bourgeat told Edith that the journal had contacted him but that even if he had known the reasons for their breakup he would not have divulged them. Le Journal du dimanche promoted the idea of Piaf as a present-day Messalina with nine lovers—an image at odds with her new song “Si tu partais,” a lushly orchestrated ballad inspired by her feelings for Takis Horn that begins, “Notre bonheur est merveilleux / Notre amour fait plaisir à Dieu” (“Our happiness is marvelous / Our love is pleasing to God”). But the popular press—perhaps in response to her defiant recent hit “Je m’en fous pas mal” (“I don’t give
a damn”)—continued to sensationalize her love life.
This negative publicity, as well as her regrets about Horn, may have influenced Piaf’s desire to spend more time abroad. Pro-American feeling was at its height in the postwar years. Like many French entertainers, she wanted to sing in the United States, where Chevalier had been warmly received (and richly remunerated) before the war. About this time, Barrier made contact with Clifford Fischer, an impresario from New York who came to see Piaf perform at L’Etoile. Although Fischer was unsure how New Yorkers, who were accustomed to lighter fare, would respond to her sober style, he drew up a contract and told her to learn English. Les Compagnons could not believe their luck when Edith announced that they were going to New York. After they gave her a fur coat for Christmas, she teased that, since there were nine of them, each had given her what amounted to half a sleeve.
Toward the end of 1946, Edith met two young performers, Pierre Roche and Charles Aznavour, who had won a following in Paris with their adaptations of swing and bebop. Like Piaf’s family, Aznavour’s were entertainers; he too had begun by singing in the street. When the young Armenian came to her apartment one night, she tested him by asking in slang if he could waltz. He said he could, both forward and backward, and after rolling up the rug, he demonstrated his skill with Edith. Assured that he was the real thing, she asked him and Roche to join her on a tour of Switzerland in March 1947. They would come on before Les Compagnons, and Aznavour would introduce Piaf in the second act.
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