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Edith Piaf – La Vie en Rose. Her 45 Finest 1935-1957
RETROSPECTIVE RTR 4137 [78:03 + 78:59]
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CD1
1. La Vie En Rose
2. Les Mômes De La Cloche
3. L'étranger
4. La Java De Cézigue
5. Mon Amant De La Coloniale
6. La Julie Jolie
7. Entre Saint-Ouen Et Clignancourt
8. Mon Légionnaire
9. Mon Coeur Est Au Coin D'une Rue
10. C'est Lui Que Mon Coeur A Choisi
11. Paris-Méditerranée
12. Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin
13. Elle Fréquentait La Rue Pigalle
14. L'accordéoniste
15. Jimmy, C'est Lui
16. C'était Un Jour De Fête
17. J'ai Dansé Avec L'amour
18. Simple Comme Bonjour
19. C'est Un Monsieur Très Distingué
20. Un Coin Tout Bleu
21. C'était Une Histoire D'amour
22. Le Brun Et Le Blond
23. Tu Es Partout
CD2
1. Les Trois Cloches (With Les Compagnons De La Chanson)
2. De L'autre Côté De La Rue
3. Regarde-Moi Toujours Comme Ça
4. Un Monsieur Me Suit Dans La Rue
5. Un Refrain Courait Dans La Rue
6. Un Coup De Grisou
7. Le Petit Homme
8. Le Chasseur De L'hôtel
9. C'est Pour Ça
10. Adieu, Mon Coeur
11. Les Amants De Paris
12. Dans Les Prisons De Nantes (With Les Compagnons De La Chanson)
13. Padam, Padam
14. J' M'en Fous Pas Mal
15. Sous Le Ciel De Paris
16. Hymne À L'amour
17. Les Amants D'un Jour
18. La Goualante Du Pauvre Jean
19. La Foule
20. C'est À Hambourg
21. Les Prisons Du Roi
22. Autumn Leaves
Edith Piaf (vocal) with accompanists
rec. 1935-57
With two hugely well filled CDs the question here is; do we really need yet another Piaf compilation and if we do what does this one offer that others don’t. And add a subsidiary but by no means unimportant rider, namely; what are the transfers like?
The first is quite tricky to answer. We start with a post-war track in media res but immediately go back to 1935. Naturally that opener is La Vie en Rose and it gives a warm, nostalgic feel to the retrospective. But why not come to it chronologically? One can object that it’s easy to programme things and one won’t listen even sequentially to two discs, and that there are chronological jumbles on the second disc. Which is where that track should be, and I still think it shows fallible decision-making. And the 1948-55 tracks are rather skimpy – there are only seven.
One can argue about such things for a long time. Many of the great songs however are here. So we have the chansons, and funereal reflections, the cynical parlando, the tough sentiment, the superior orchestrations, and devoted piano accompaniments, the genial composer collaborators (Marguerite Monnot for example, prominently), the film music (J'ai Dansé Avec L'amour), and the nuanced violin obbligatos (C'était Une Histoire D'amour).
There are things we can’t be without - Les Trois Cloches – and the more clichéd big production numbers (principally Un Coup De Grisou). We have Piaf soaring defiantly over the chorus-strewn C'est Pour Ça and an early example of where her defiantly histrionic talents would take her later in Dans Les Prisons De Nantes, with Les Compagnons De La Chanson. It’s a strong, successful number but one that presages the vibrato-throb extravagances of her later years. I’ve always thought her New York recording of Autumn Leaves, in English, sabotaged by the glutinous arrangement (originally it’s Joseph Kosma’s song Les feuilles mortes and the words are by Prévert).
Enough then about selection principles. The transfers vary. I prefer EMI’s own work by and large. For example the EMI Eternelle release [07243 593866-2] had far more of an open treble, especially in the earlier numbers. This Retrospective sounds rather too airless. Neat notes by Peter Dempsey.
Jonathan Woolf