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Édith Piaf (born Édith Giovanna Gassion; 19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963) was a French singer best known for performing songs in the cabaret and modern chanson genres. She is widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer and one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century. Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson réaliste and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. Her most widely known songs include "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "L'Accordéoniste" (1940), and "Padam, padam..." (1951). Piaf began her career touring with her father at the age of fourteen. Her fame increased during the German occupation of France and in 1945, Piaf's signature song, "La Vie en rose" ('life in pink') was published. She became France's most popular entertainer in the late 1940s, also touring Europe, the United States, and South America. Her popularity in the United States led her to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show eight times. She continued to perform, including several series of concerts at the Paris Olympia music hall, until a few months before her death in 1963 at age 47. Her last song, "L'Homme de Berlin", was recorded with her husband in April 1963. Since her death, several documentaries and films have been produced about Piaf's life, and her music is a touchstone of French culture. Early life Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is unknown. Her birth certificate states that she was born in Paris on December 19, 1915, at the Hôpital Tenon hospital. Her birth name was Édith Giovanna Gassion. The name "Édith" was inspired by British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed 2 months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity during World War I. Twenty years later, Édith's stage surname Piaf was created by her first promoter, based on a French term for sparrow. Édith's father Louis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944) was an acrobatic street performer from Normandy with a theater background. Louis's father was Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and his mother was Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), who ran a brothel in Normandy and was known professionally as Maman Tine. Édith's mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard (1895–1945) was a singer and circus performer born in Italy who performed under the stage name Line Marsa. Annetta's father was Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) of French descent and her grandmother was Emma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), an acrobat of Algerian and Italian descent. Annetta and Louis divorced on June 4, 1929. Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha), in Bethandy, Normandy. When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. The bordello had two floors and seven rooms, and the prostitutes were not very numerous – "about ten poor girls", as she later described. In fact, five or six were permanent while a dozen others would join the brothel during market days and other busy days. The sub-mistress of the brothel was called "Madam Gaby" and Piaf considered her almost like family; later, she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931. From the age of three to seven, Piaf was allegedly blind as a result of keratitis. According to one of her biographers, she recovered her sight after her grandmother's prostitutes pooled money to accompany her on a pilgrimage honouring Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Piaf claimed this resulted in a miraculous healing. Career 1929–1939 At age 14, Piaf was taken by her father to join him in his acrobatic street performances all over France, where she first began to sing in public. The following year, Piaf met Simone "Mômone" Berteaut, who became a companion for most of her life. Berteaut later falsely represented herself as Piaf's half-sister in a memoir. Together they toured the streets singing and earning money for themselves. With the additional money Piaf earned as part of an acrobatic trio, she and Berteaut were able to rent their own place. Piaf took a room at the Grand Hôtel de Clermont in Paris and worked with Berteaut as a street singer around Paris and its suburbs. Piaf met a young man named Louis Dupont in 1932 and lived with him for a time; she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Marcelle "Cécelle" Dupont, on February 11, 1933, when Piaf was seventeen. After Piaf's relationship with Dupont ended, Marcelle, who had been living with her father, contracted meningitis and died in July 1935, aged two. In 1935, Piaf was discovered by nightclub owner Louis Leplée. Leplée persuaded Piaf (then known by her birth name of Édith Gassion) to sing despite her extreme nervousness. This nervousness and her height of only 142 centimetres (4 ft 8 in), inspired Leplée to give her the nickname La Môme Piaf, which is Paris slang for "The Waif Sparrow" or "The Little Sparrow". Leplée taught Piaf about stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel. Prior to Piaf's opening night, Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign, resulting in the attendance of many celebrities. The bandleader that evening was Django Reinhardt, with his pianist, Norbert Glanzberg.: 35  Her nightclub gigs led to her first two records produced that same year, with one of them penned by Marguerite Monnot, a collaborator throughout Piaf's life and one of her favourite composers. On April 6, 1936, Leplée was murdered. Piaf was questioned and accused as an accessory, but acquitted. Leplée had been killed by mobsters with previous ties to Piaf. A barrage of negative media attention now threatened Piaf's career. To rehabilitate her image, she recruited Raymond Asso, with whom she would become romantically involved. He changed her stage name to "Édith Piaf", barred undesirable acquaintances from seeing her, and commissioned Monnot to write songs that reflected or alluded to Piaf's previous life on the streets. 1940–1944 In 1940, Piaf co-starred in Jean Cocteau's one-act play Le Bel Indifférent. Piaf's career and fame gained momentum during the German occupation of France in World War II. She began forming friendships with prominent people, such as actor and singer Maurice Chevalier and poet Jacques Bourgeat. Piaf also performed in various nightclubs and brothels, which flourished between 1940 and 1945. Various top Paris brothels, including Le Chabanais, Le Sphinx, One Two Two, La rue des Moulins, and Chez Marguerite, were reserved for German officers and collaborating Frenchmen. Piaf was invited to take part in a concert tour to Berlin, sponsored by the German officials, together with artists such as Loulou Gasté, Raymond Souplex, Viviane Romance and Albert Préjean. In 1942, she was able to afford a luxury flat i.... Discover the Edith Yates popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Edith Yates books.