La Vie en Rose

Edith Piaf is not, strictly speaking, a champagne vendor. But whenever and wherever she sings, the corks start popping faster than ever. For, like no other, La Piaf's peculiarly vibrant voice is the voice of Paris--a voice that seems to summon misty memories of Montmartre for those who have been there, and thirsty fantasies for those who have not.

Last week, as they have ever since she opened in mid-month, the corks were popping (at $16 a bottle) in a chichi midtown Manhattan nightclub called the Versailles. To everyone who could crowd in, even the $6.50 filet mignon seemed a bargain when little (4 ft. 11 in., 90 Ibs.) Piaf ("The Sparrow") began to sing.

As usual, she appeared from behind the pale green curtains dressed in a simple short black frock ("It is my uniform --I am soldier"), her dark brown hair frumpily frizzled, her gaminish face almost bare of makeup. (Says Piaf: "I don't like my appearance to distract . . .") Then, announcing her own numbers in newly learned English, like a ten-year-old reciting Longfellow, she packed them all off to Paree.

With her eyes closed ecstatically, she gave them Hymne `a l'Amour; then her gallant song of the Foreign Legion, Le Fanion de la Legion. By the time she had gotten through her prayerful Bonjour Monsieur Saint-Pierre and the piquant one that Piaf partisans will walk miles to hear --her own composition, La Vie en Rose, this time with a chorus in English--the fans were pounding their hands.

Piaf (real name Gassion) tries to explain in English that when she first started singing as a spindly child in the streets of Paris "I cried . . . cried, without tears. You understand?" What she means is that she bawled her songs. Even now, France's famed chanteuse needs no microphone; she sings out, nasally, a little as if she were singing through a papercovered comb. But with her infallible feel for beat and flow, Piaf fans find it pretty exciting.

Offstage, Piaf, now 33, is more hoyden than gamin, loves to poke fun in a husky voice at her manager and friends. And she doesn't worry about her appearance distracting; with her hair combed, and a smartly tailored suit, she is tres chic. She is doggedly serious about learning English. She takes a lesson a day; instead of table hopping between her two shows at the Versailles, she studies her grammar book in her dressing room. The main reason: after her third visit to the U.S., she has decided "six months Paris, six months New York, I like. You understand?"

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