No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [60]
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