Piaf
October 11th marks the 50th anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death. A few days ago, a bunch of great French singers paid tribute to La Mome in New York. Anyone’s who seen the movie La Vie en Rose or read about Edith, knows about her ties to the big apple. See an introduction to that show here. Below, a few performances by Elodie Frégé, Olivia Ruiz and Coeur de Pirate on that tribute night:
The enjoyable introduction to the show recorded at the Beacon Theatre on Broadway on 19 September, with back-stage and informal clips of several chanteuses who feature in Filles Sourires, is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKPCsNqt614
All 19 songs are now on Youtube. As well as those linked here, Patricia Kaas, Nolwenn Leroy, Zaz, Beth Ditto and some male singers take part. The first number is ‘La Foule’, a duet by Zaz & Nolwenn Leroy (both sing solo later):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bjNx7bfNzws
And you can follow the whole show (19 numbers) through from there. It was shown on France 2 on 5 October.
Olivia Ruiz seems particularly in her element with ‘Milord’.
It is interesting to compare Coeur de Pirate’s sunny, positive style with what must have been the forced happy demeanour that La Môme herself had to put on for ‘Mon manège à moi’ (‘You are my Merry-go-round’) for her Ed Sullivan Show filmed performance in 1959 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFYYgmpuffU
The lyrics of ‘Mon manège à moi’ with a good English translation are at
http://lyricstranslate.com/en/mon-manege-moi-mon-manege-moi.html