No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [93]
Before she herself took off across the Atlantic, Piaf recorded another song with a bittersweet view of the traveling life, with lyrics by Claude Delécluse and Michèle Senlis, set to music by Monnot. “C’est à Hambourg, à Santiago / A Whitechapel, à Bornéo / … / A Rotterdam ou à Frisco,” it began, a geography of ports where men have one-night stands with women who solicit them in every language—“Hello boy! You come with me? / Amigo! Te quiero mucho!” Another of Piaf’s best-known tunes, “C’est à Hambourg” restaged the tale of the goodhearted whore multiplied by all the towns conjured in its credo: “J’ai l’coeur trop grand pour un seul gars / J’ai l’coeur trop grand et c’est pour ça / Qu’j’écris l’amour sur toute la terre.” (“My heart’s too big for just one guy / My heart’s too big and that is why / I send my love all round the world.”) The cliché kept returning to claim her, as if the image of the woman whose heart embraced multitudes was how her audiences, and the singer herself, wanted to see her.
Piaf, Pills, Barrier, and Roland Avelys flew to New York on March 1, 1955, entrained to Chicago, then took the California Zephyr across the plains and through the mountains to San Francisco. While the rest of her party admired the scenery, Edith spent her time in the sleeper, attended by the train’s hostesses, the “Zephyrettes.” The Bonels joined them at the Clift Hotel. On trips to inspect local attractions, Edith remained indifferent to the redwoods: “Nothing special,” she said, taking up her knitting, “just a lot of wood.”
Her new show, Edith Piaf and Her Continental Revue, featured a mime named Mimmo, dancers, acrobats, and “Jacques Peals” (in America it was unthinkable to use his medicinal-sounding name). After San Francisco, where she was hailed as “France’s greatest gift to the theater since Sarah Bernhardt,” they took the revue to Los Angeles and Chicago. Each night Piaf sang twelve songs, including “If You Love Me” and “Merry-Go-Round” (“Hymne à l’amour” and “Je n’en connais pas la fin”), “La Vie en rose” in English and French, and “C’est à Hambourg,” “Je t’ai dans la peau,” and “La Goualante du pauvre Jean,” an audience favorite. The critics raved when her songs came out on Angel Records’ Blue Label. “Piaf is France,” one wrote. “She makes one believe what Jefferson … once said: ‘Every man has two countries, his own and France.’ ”
“I was so exhausted when I left Paris,” Edith told Bourgeat, “that I’ve been taking it easy in America.” Pills would soon leave the troupe to star in a musical in London; she would remain in the States. Meanwhile, she asked her mentor for more information about the aims and philosophy of the Rosicrucians: “This matters a lot to me, but let’s keep it entre nous.” What she kept for herself was the presence of the new man in her life—Jean Dréjac, who would later join this esoteric order. The lyricist had come to Chicago to be with her but was staying at a hotel under an assumed name. Even if Pills did not yet know that he had a rival for Edith’s affections, his decision to leave her show at the end of May suggests that their duo was unraveling.
The troupe felt relief on arrival in Montreal, where Pills could appear with his name spelled properly. Piaf was “a deeply expressive