No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [62]
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 Compagnons 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