La MГґme kept singing about the streets where sheвЂ™d come from all her life ( Mon coeur est au coin dвЂ™une rue and Elle frequentait la rue Pigalle are just two examples), and as a parvenu living in style once sheвЂ™d hit the big time, she blew all her money on a farm, as well as showering her hangers-on in gifts. He discovered her singing for her supper on the streets of Montmartre, and she often sang in a Bellevilloise argot apparently not dissimilar to a Parisian version of old cockney. Leplee was murdered by the mob in 1936, and Piaf was under police surveillance as a suspect for a time, but later cleared. Avert your ears and PiafвЂ™s life was a punk opera decades before the genre exploded.Д«orn Г‰dith Giovanna Gassion, she was nicknamed La MГґme Piaf (meaning вЂњthe little sparrowвЂќ) by her first manager, Louis Leplee. WhatвЂ™s more, she led a life so bohemian and wild that she makes the Jim Morrison вЂ“ buried, like her, on PГЁre Lachaise cemetery вЂ“ look like a calculable conformist who got a bit carried away on his gap year. Her brand of torch songs and cabaret showtunes might seem antediluvian to some, but a voice with such power to convey emotion never dates. To paraphrase an old footballing cliche, fashion is temporary, class is permanent. If Piaf is a little out of fashion with todayвЂ™s jeunesse dorГ©e then you suspect that could all change at any moment with, say, a high-profile cover version or a new motion picture. While celebrations for PiafвЂ™s centenary have been low key this December, France вЂ“ and the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris in particular вЂ“ honoured her memory following the 50th anniversary of her death in October 2013. From growing up in a bordello, to spending four years blinded by keratitis in her infancy, to joining her acrobat father on the road in her teens, to shooting up morphine, cortisone and falling into alcoholism to alleviate a dodgy back sustained in a car crash as an adult (precipitating what she described as her вЂњyears of hellвЂќ), it certainly wasnвЂ™t without event. If this was fanciful, then FranceвЂ™s most legendary chanteuse didnвЂ™t have to embellish the details of the rest of her life, such was the dramatic scope. She arrived at the Hospital Tenon in the 20th arrondissement of Paris on 19 December, though according to her own version of events, she was delivered on the front steps of her home at 72 Rue de Belleville after a horse-drawn ambulance failed to show. Г‰dith Piaf was born 100 years ago on Saturday, around the same time Einstein made a breakthrough with his theory of general relativity.

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