TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!
Features Edith Piaf's "Great Recordings 1935-1943" and "La Vie en Rose".
GREAT RECORDINGS 1935 - 1943 - Edith Piaf's younger self dominates this chronologically jumbled collection of chestnuts from the first seven-and-a-half years of her recording career (December 1935 to June 1943). Internationally famous for leading a tempestuous life that was pockmarked with vice and misfortune, Piaf's persona always had a vein of pathos pulsing away beneath the surface. This powerfully voiced little woman's successes were often tinged with scandal; she deliberately chose to record the comparatively wholesome "Mon Legionnaire" while retooling her tarnished image following the widely publicized murder of her showbiz mentor Louis Leplee. "Les Momes de la Cloche" was her very first record; here a marvelously wry whimsy is buoyed by the rippling voice of the accordion. All but six of these recordings were made during the '30s; by the early '40s, Piaf's Weltschmerz would begin to solidify as she matured into an even more arrestingly intense performer.
LA VIE EN ROSE - La Vie en Rose illustrates the gradual ripening of Edith Piaf's artistry with recordings that reference a timeline from her first session (December 1935) to the full plume of her postwar maturity (March 1947). This quintessentially Parisian entertainer was already a bundle of piqued intensities when she made her recording debut; during the '40s she evolved into a living embodiment of the increasingly theatrical and melodramatic songs that she preferred. There are premonitions here of the almost Artaud-like extremities of her later years; "C'est Pour Ca" is a disturbing tale of heartbreak and suicide; so is "Un Coup de Grisou," which must have been partially inspired by a certain turn of events described in Emile Zola's novel Germinal. And the ritualistic, solemnly beautiful "Les Trois Cloches" might just be Edith Piaf's masterpiece. Accompanied by the vocal group Les Compagnons de la Chanson, Piaf delivers a moving paean to the living and the dead.
