No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [61]
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