The "new Piafs"...
When Édith Piaf died in 1963, aged only 47, she left a huge hole at the heart of the French music industry. The previous three years had seen the chanson gradually eclipsed by the oncoming horde of yé-yé singers, at least as far as the media were concerned, although there would always be room on the airwaves and in the country's leading music halls and theatres for the stars of a more traditional form of French popular music. Piaf had been in ill health for several years but her sudden passing was still a shock that left the country reeling. Forty thousand people turned up to attend her burial in P ère Lachaise; many thousands more flocked to the shops to pick up one of her many classic recordings. Piaf may, to paraphrase her most famous song, have had nothing to regret, but her fellow citizens very much regretted that she was no longer alongside them. Perhaps inevitably, Piaf's departure from the stage engendered any amount of debate as to who might possibly repla...