![]() ![]() ![]() Piaf rose every day at dusk, wrote, rehearsed, commanded, took pills and drank and sang until dawn. In this vivid work, Carolyn Burke paints a picture of a woman passionate, driven, funny, haunted. All the stars of her day crowded to see this tiny woman with "the voice of life itself" - Charlie Chaplin, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Jean Cocteau, Yves Montand (her protégé and one of her legion of lovers). ![]() Her "coiled vibrato," as Burke so beautifully captures it, sold more records than any other artist in her time and filled concert halls around the world. "The hardest working 97 pounds in show business" Ed Sullivan said as he introduced the diminutive star on his show. Discovered singing on the streets of Paris at 18 and christened la mome piaf (kid sparrow), she rose to become France's greatest star. Raised for a time in her grandmother's brothel, she grew up in a world of pimps, prostitutes, petty thieves and sailors. ![]() Her father was an itinerant contortionist, her mother a drug addict who abandoned her. Tell the facts and the myths and voila - a book you can't put down. Performing Arts The Cheerful Side Of Edith PiafĮdith Piaf's story is bulletproof. ![]()
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