Edith Piaf was one of the most greatly loved singers of the twentieth century. From the start of her exceptional career in the 1930s, her waif-like form and heart-wrenching voice endeared her first to the French, then to audiences around the globe. As she moved from her youth singing in the streets to the glamour of the Paris music-halls, Piaf formed lasting friendships with such figures as Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau and Marlene Dietrich; she wrote many of her own songs, aided the Resistance in the Second World War, and mentored younger singers like Yves Montand and Charles Aznavour. Yet her path to stardom was full of tragedies - the death of her daughter in infancy; the death of Marcel Cerdan, her greatest love, in a plane crash; her many illnesses, affairs and addictions, all of which nourished her passionate performances and strengthened her enduring bond with audiences. In this mesmerising, definitive new biography Carolyn Burke gives us Piaf in her own time and place, illuminating through sympathetic readings of sources hitherto unavailable both the charm and the pathos of the 'Little Sparrow' who enchanted generations and still enthralls us today.

The world-famous French singer Édith Piaf (1915-63) was never just a singer. This book suggests new ways of understanding her, her myth and her meanings over time at home and abroad, by proposing the notion of an ‘imagined’ Piaf.

Miles Hordern sailed alone in a 28-foot sloop across the Southern Ocean from New Zealand to Patagonia and back - a voyage of 13,000 nautical miles across the largest stretch of water on earth and a region of icebergs, gales and high seas. Six weeks later he made landfall on the coast of Chile and, after a chance meeting, embarked on a 1000-mile cruise southwards to survey channels and fjords in Patagonia, one of the last uncharted areas in the world. From Chile he sailed north on the Humboldt current, then west through the tropics on the return passage to New Zealand, arriving home some 18 months after he had left.

(Piano Vocal). Piano/vocal arrangment of the favorite French ballad made famous by the "Little Sparrow," Edith Piaf.

A tiny, black-clad figure with a scorchingly powerful voice who dominated stages around the world for almost 30 years, the legendary Edith Piaf still reigns supreme more than four decades after her death. In this powerful book, Piaf's amazing rags to riches to story is told with unprecedented detail, honesty, and compassion. Friends, composers, lovers, colleagues, and the father of Piaf's only child have contributed. Skillfully analyzing every aspect of this great artist's life, a vivid portrait is painted of the celebrated chanteuse whose triumphs and tragedies were shared by an adoring public. Illustrated with photographs from the author's collection and containing a complete discography, Piaf also features detailed appendices of her films, plays, and all stage and screen tributes, making this the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography available. Piaf is the ultimate tribute to the undisputed genius of a remarkable woman.

"In this innovative book, Stacy Holman Jones presents torch singing as a much more complicated phenomenon than the familiar trope of a woman lamenting her victimhood. With an ethnographer's eye, she observes the bluesy torch singers, asking if they are possibly performing critiques of the very lyrics they are singing. From this perspective, we see the singer giving expression not only to desire but also to an incipient determination to resist and change. Holman Jones also reveals points of contact in the opposition between spectators and performers, emotion and intellect, and love and power. Instead of interpreting the expression of love as a woman's violent mistake - as willing deception and passive fate - Holman Jones allows us to hear an active search for hope."--BOOK JACKET.