French singer-writer-composer Charles Dumont, who is best known for co-writing Édith Piaf classic Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, has died at the age of 95 after a long illness.
Dumont, who was born in the French city of Cahors in 1929, developed an early passion for jazz and trained first to be a trumpet player at the Toulouse Music Conservatory.
He moved to Paris after Word War Two, where he continued his music career but had to abandon the trumpet after an operation on his tonsils. He then pivoted to the piano and composition writing.
Throughout the 1950s, Dumont continued to work in music while staying financially afloat with odd jobs. It was during this period that he met lyricist and long-time collaborator Michel Vaucaire, and the pair co-wrote Non, Je Regrette Rien in 1956.
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According to Dumont’s own account, Piaf iconic connection to Non, Je Regrette Rien nearly did not happen after the singing star, unimpressed by his and Vaucaire’s compositions, refused their requests for a meeting.
When they finally secured an appointment through her housekeeper, the singer was furious that she had not been forewarned. She kept them waiting for an hour and snapped that they could present just one of their compositions.
Dumont sang Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. After a silence, she declared it was the song she had been waiting for and that she would perform it at her next concert at the famed Olympia Hall.
The writer-composer would go on to write another 30 songs for Piaf, with the collaboration only ending due to the singer’s early death at the age of 47 in 1963.
Across his career, Dumont wrote songs for a raft of other iconic figures including Dalida, Tino Rossi, and Jacques Brel (Je m’en remets à toi), while Barbra Streisand, snapped up his and Vaucaire’s song about the Berlin war, Le Mur, for her 1966 album inspired by French songs, entitled Je m’appelle Barbra.
Dumont also occasionally wrote music for films and TV series, notably taking credits on Jacques Tati’s 1970s classics Trafic and Parade, while he is also cited on the credits of films such as Inception, The Dreamers, Bull Durham and Intolerable Cruelty for the inclusion of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien on their soundtracks.
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