Albums: The Very Best of Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose, The Voice of the Sparrow: The Very Best of Edith Piaf

Édith Piaf (19 December 1915 — 10 October 1963) was a French singer and cultural icon of partly Algerian and Italian descent who "is almost universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer." Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads. Among her songs are "La vie en rose" (1946), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "l'Accordéoniste" (1941), "Padam...Padam", and "La Foule". In 1935 Piaf was discovered in the Pigalle area of Paris by the nightclub owner Louis Leplée, whose club Le Gerny off the Champs Élysées was frequented by the upper and lower classes alike.

He persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness, which, combined with her height of only 147 cm (4 feet 10 inches), inspired him to give her the nickname that would stay with her for the rest of her life and serve as her stage name, La Môme Piaf (The Waif Sparrow, Little Sparrow or Kid Sparrow in Parigot slang). Leplée taught her the basics of stage presence and told her to wear a black dress which would later become her trademark apparel. Leplée ran a large publicity campaign prior to her opening night, which resulted in celebrities including actor Maurice Chevalier attending the opening.

Her nightclub gigs led to her first two records produced that same year, with one of them penned by Marguerite Monnot, a collaborator throughout Piaf's life. In 1940, Édith co-starred in Jean Cocteau's successful one-act play Le Bel Indifférent. She began to become friends with prominent people, such as Chevalier and the poet Jacques Borgeat.

She wrote the lyrics of many of her songs and collaborated with composers on the tunes. In 1944, Édith Piaf discovered Yves Montand in Paris, made him part of her act, and became his mentor and lover. Within a year, he became one of the most famous singers in France, and she broke off their relationship when he had become almost as popular as she was.

Piaf embarked on her first American tour in late 1947, and at first met with little success; audiences expecting a bright, gaudy Parisian spectacle were disappointed with her simple presentation and downcast songs. Just as she was about to leave the country, a prominent New York critic wrote a glowing review of her show, urging audiences not to dismiss her out of hand; she was booked at the Café Versailles in New York, and thanks to the publicity, she was a hit, staying for over five months. In that time, she met up with French boxer Marcel Cerdan, an acquaintance of about a year.

In spite of Cerdan's marriage, the two began a passionate affair, not long before Cerdan won the world middleweight championship and became a French national hero. Unfortunately, tragedy struck in October 1949, when Cerdan was planning to visit Piaf in New York; wanting him to arrive sooner, she convinced him to take a plane instead of a boat. The plane crashed in the Azores, killing him.

Devastated by guilt and grief, Piaf sank into drug and alcohol abuse, and began to experiment with morphine. In early 1950, she recorded "L'Hymne à l'Amour," a tribute to the one lover Piaf would never quite get over; co-written with Marguerite Monnot, it became one of her best-known and most heartfelt songs. On 6 April 1936,[4] Leplée was murdered and Piaf was questioned in the matter and accused of being an accessory, but she was acquitted.[6] He had been killed by mobsters with previous ties to Piaf.[11] This resulted in much negative media attention directed towards Piaf,[7] which threatened her career.[4] To rehabilitate her image, she recruited Raymond Asso, with whom she would also become romantically involved.

He changed her stage name to "Édith Piaf", barred her undesirable acquaintances from seeing her, and commissioned Monnot to write songs that reflected or alluded to Piaf's previous life on the streets.[4]

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