Charles Dumont, the French composer best known for composing Édith Piaf’s timeless classic “Non Je ne Regrette Rien,” has died at the age of 95.
Dumont’s death on Monday (November 18), which followed a long illness, was confirmed by his partner to the news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP).
A trained trumpeter and musician, Dumont – born in 1929 – collaborated with an array of international stars, including Barbra Streisand, Dalida, Jacques Brel and Juliette Gréco, but it was his work with the late French singer Piaf that he became most famous for.
While he originally wrote “Non Je ne Regrette Rien” in 1956, aged 27, it wasn’t until 1960, when he was 31, that he and lyricist Michel Vaucaire brought it to one of France’s most celebrated performers.
“She’d already said no to three of my songs,” Dumont said of Piaf in 2013. “I didn’t want to go back, but Michel persuaded me.”
After playing the song for her, he recalled: “She asked me, was I really the composer? I said yes. She asked me to play it a third time, so I did, and her mood changed. She looked at me differently.
“She said to me: don’t worry, young man. This song will go round the world, and I will open my next concert tour with it.”
Piaf recorded the song a month after hearing it before performing it live at the Olympia concert hall that December.
“My mother gave birth to me, but Édith Piaf brought me into the world,” Dumont told AFP in 2015. “Without her, I would never have done everything I did, neither as a composer nor as a singer.”
“Non Je ne Regrette Rien (No, I Regret Nothing)” went on to top the French music charts for seven weeks and sold 800,000 copies. The ballad has since gone on to feature in several films and commercials and inspire English-language recordings by artists like Shirley Bassey and Elaine Paige.
Dumont continued collaborating with Piaf, going on to write more than 30 songs for her before her death from liver cancer in 1963.
It was his work with Piaf that later gave him the courage and confidence to travel to New York and approach Streisand, who was performing Funny Girl on Broadway.
Dumont played the piano for her in her dressing room before she agreed to make his record. In 1966, Streisand released a single featuring her singing Dumont’s “Le Mur” in French on Side A and its English version “I’ve Been Here” on Side B.
Dumont gave his final stage performance in 2019 in Paris, telling the audience: “When you come back in front of an audience, who come to see you as they came 20, 30 or 40 years ago and give you the same welcome, then they give you back your 20s.”
