Edith Piaf - Very Best of Edith Piaf

Revelatory collection: No regrets despite being shorted 4 songs (including "Je Ne Regrette")

I've heard Edith Piaf off and on through the years and pretty much cast a deaf ear. Her music seemed too remote from the African-American tradition of American Popular Song, whose composers and exponents--Berlin, Kern, Arlen, Gershwin, Rodgers, Crosby, Mercer--created a unique art as a result, primarily, of being drawn to "black" music. (Make no mistake about it: the distinctiveness of "classic" American popular song, or the so-called Great American Songbook, is not its European but its African-American indebtedness.) But the recent attention Piaf has received (I haven't seen the movie) led me to the realization I didn't even have a recording by her. This new two-disc release of 36 tunes (where did Amazon come up with 40?) seemed like the best bet to get to know her better (but don't expect any written documentation whatsoever). By the end of the first disc I was no longer noticing, let alone bothered by, that French Chanteuse style with the fast-moving vibrato that used to turn me off right away. The woman's spirit simply cuts through any superficial analysis of style, or consideration of cultural differences.

Perhaps hearing Shirley Horn's version of Hymne a L'Amour (from "Here's to Life") is what helped bridge the cultural distance for me, but the present remarkable collection leaves no doubt that this petite powerhouse was packed with plenty, plenty soul. What she offers is universal--on a level with Billie and Judy, maybe better in some respects. There's not simply talent, strength, vulnerability, tragedy, passion, great energy and (unrelenting) intensity here--but unmistakable courage, and not limited to the singer but as a prerequisite to living life.

She may lack Lady Day's playfulness and understated subtlety (which sadly was reduced to bathetic spectacle during the last 5-6 years); she doesn't encompass all of vaudeville and play to the back row like Judy (who really didn't swing much more than the Little Sparrow), but she possesses more than smallness combined with power (otherwise, Kay Starr should be considered of the same magnitude). With every note that she sings she celebrates life--a frequent downer, as she acknowledges--like few other singers who come to mind. She sings as much "blues" as Billie (listen to J'ai Danse Avec L'amour); the drama of Garland is present in every song--at times, close to an authoritative, narrative recitative but elsewhere a soaring, lyrical line (Chante Moi) or contemporary lieder (L'etranger). The clarity of her diction is enough to spur you to bone up on your French.

[Postscript on Piaf's "self-destructiveness." I see much reference to this, including harsh judgments of Piaf (at least it's a change of pace from fixating on Billie, Judy, Cole Porter, Larry Hart, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Bud Powell, Chet Baker, and a hundred other artists I could list in a couple of heartbeats--in another review I addressed Frank Rosolino's horrible and horrifying end). 1st, it's Hollywood (in this case, the French film industry) that elects to take this route; 2nd, it's the sensational stuff out of which box office hits are made. But why do we have a magnetic attraction to such artists? Is it because their personal pain makes ours feel lessened by contrast? Or because knowing that others have gone through what we have, and yet bravely carried on while "singing in their chains," is an inspiring model to us all?

This collection omits the "Piaf anthem"--Je Ne Regrette Rien (maybe it's one of the "missing 4" on my 36-tune edition of this supposedly 40-song collection). The song's title is quite a statement--coming from a woman who died of cancer after 3 serious automobile accidents. But it's a song, for Pete's sake, not the defiant rejoinder of an unrepentant Epicurean to those who would judge her for "wasting" her life. All the same, about the absence of Je Ne Regrette Rien, I have no regrets. Any collection of Sinatra songs that included the tedious and mediocre "My Way" while proclaiming itself as representative of Sinatra the artist would deserve to be instantly discredited. As someone once said, "That's life!" ] June 5, 2008

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