The man who made 'The Little Sparrow' fly

John Lichfield meets Charles Dumont, the songwriter behind 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien'

(Getty Images)

Fifty years ago this month, a failing songwriter sat down at his piano in his Paris flat and furiously bashed out the melody of a new song.

He was, he remembers, "angry and depressed". He had signed the lease for a new apartment but could scarcely afford to buy furniture, or food, for his wife and two children.

This week, Charles Dumont sat down behind the same piano in the same apartment and – at my request – played the same song. I asked, modestly, for a few notes. Dumont played, beautifully, to the soaring conclusion of what he calls the "song that changed my life".

In the past half-century, the royalties from that one piece of music have given Charles Dumont not riches, but what he describes as the "steady income of a senior civil servant".

Dumont's "angry" song has become one of the best-known, and best-loved, pieces of popular music. It has become the global symbol of la chanson Française (French popular music). It remains the signature tune, and the epitaph, of the most enduring of all French popular singers, Edith Piaf (1915-1963).

Although the song had no title when Dumont composed it (he vaguely intended it as a patriotic anthem) it was transformed by his co-writer and lyricist, Michel Vaucaire, into a paean to the human spirit and the restorative power of love. Its title became: "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien".

Dumont went on to write many other successful songs, for "The Little Sparrow" and for others. With Piaf's encouragement, he became a much-admired singer himself, in the French balladeer tradition. This week, to mark his 80th birthday, he has released a double album of classic French love songs, half of them written or co-written by himself; half of them "songs which are associated with important events in my life".

Dumont is cheerfully indestructible and is touring France this year, and next, with other "golden oldie" French singers, performing for audiences of up to 7,000 people. His repertoire consists of romantic standards, including "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien".

"People ask if I don't get sick and tired of that song," Dumont said. "Or if I have come to resent its success, because, 50 years later, it's still what I'm best remembered for.

"No. To me that would be the height of ingratitude. Why should I resent, or be bored with, 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien'? How many people can say they helped to create something legendary, something magical, something I hope will live forever?

"I was reborn with that song; it transformed my life. It has been my calling card all over the world. It changed me from a jobbing song-writer, a fabricator of songs, to someone who had the confidence, and the opportunity, to write what I wanted and what I felt."

Dumont retells, with relish and self-deprecating humour, the story of how he "sold" his song to Edith Piaf exactly 50 years ago tomorrow, on 24 October 1960. By appointment, he and Vaucaire apprehensively rang her doorbell at the Boulevard Lannes, close to the Bois de Boulogne.

Piaf, exhausted by drink, drugs, multiple love affairs and road accidents, had retired, at the age of 44. She was refusing all appeals to make a come-back. She despised Charles Dumont, whom she dismissed, he says, "as a mechanical songwriter of no great talent, someone who wrote mediocre numbers for half a dozen singers".

Piaf's assistant told the two men, apologetically, that the appointment had been cancelled. She had tried, she said, to leave messages. "Madame" had changed her mind.

They were about to leave. ("I was very angry," recalled Dumont) when one of the most famous voices in the world spoke from a distant bedroom. Since they had come, The Voice growled, they might as well come in. She would dress at once.

An hour later, Edith Piaf shuffled into the room – tiny, imperious, short-tempered. "I'll hear only one song," Piaf said to the two men. "Just one."

"I went to the piano in a great fury," Dumont recalled. "I knew she was going to reject me again. I played, and sang 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien', very, very loudly. There was a silence. Then she said: 'Play that again.'

"When I finished, Piaf asked, rather rudely: 'Did you really write that song. You?' I shrugged and said 'yes'. She said: 'That song will conquer the world."

And so it did. Piaf came out of retirement. She sang "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" on French television the following month. It was the centrepiece of her comeback gala performance at the Olympia music hall in Paris in December 1960 – a sell-out which saved the hall from bankruptcy. A record was released in January. More than 100,000 copies were sold in two days and more than a million by the end of the year.

Dumont proudly showed me a copy of the original artwork from the album in which the song later appeared. Edith Piaf, brought up in deep poverty in the back streets of Paris, has scrawled a tribute across the back in large, untidy writing, making schoolgirl mistakes in her French grammar. The message reads: "To you Charles, to thank you for the marvellous songs that you gave me. They allowed me to keep the love of the public and gave me, on 29 December 1960 – the night of the Olympia concert – the most wonderful evening of my career."

"Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" has since been recorded in scores of languages by scores of performers, including Shirley Bassey, Duke Ellington, Elaine Paige, Johnny Hallyday, Patricia Kaas, Mireille Mathieu, the German heavy-metal band, Rammstein and even the satirical British band Half Man Half Biscuit.

Yet, it remains the anthem of one performer, Edith Piaf. In two minutes, 19 seconds, it encapsulates a life in which an extraordinary talent and a voracious appetite for l'amour triumphed (mostly) over destitution, betrayal, the tragic deaths of loved ones, drink and drugs. No one but Piaf could get so much passion from all those guttural, Parisian "Rs": "Hrrien de hrrien. Non, je ne hrreghrrette hrrien."

And yet the song came remarkably late: both late in Edith Piaf's career, she died in 1963, and late in the history of la chanson Française as France's mainstream popular music.

In October 1960, Elvis Presley had been a chart-topper for four years in the United States, The Beatles were already performing in Liverpool and a young man called Jean-Philippe Smet (Johnny Hallyday) had just started his career as "Le Rocker Français". "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" led the French charts for 17 weeks in 1961.

Dumont has always remained faithful to the French tradition; quieter, more melodic and more poetic than the rock tradition.

Several of his other songs have become French classics: "Ta Cigarette Après L'amour", "Les Chansons d'Amour" and "Les Amants," which he recorded in duet with Piaf. He says that he feels no resentment against the global triumph of American and British styles of popular music or even against rap. "There is rubbish in all traditions and there are wonderful numbers in all traditions. Sincerity is what counts," he said.

He has great hopes for his new double album, recorded for Sony Music, Charles Dumont, Chante L'Amour. "It is my best record for many years," he said. "I have always tried to do everything with as much talent as I possess, but when you reach my age your last record may be your last. I have tried in this record to encapsulate my whole life."

All of which raises an obvious question. When large parts of France are protesting at being asked to work after 60, how does Dumont – and so many other popular musicians – carry on performing into their 70s and beyond?

"When you are a singer, people – especially women – look at you differently," he said. "They don't see the old man. They see the voice or, if you like, the soul. To be regarded that way, well, it rejuvenates you. It regenerates you.

"That's part of why we carry on so long. But it is also something to do with the nature of performance. If you are a singer, or an actor, every performance is different. Every performance is a challenge.

"I am terrified every time I go on stage. That also keeps you young. It is not like working in a factory or driving a truck, where, I can see why people might want to stop at 60."

And his whole career, Dumont says, has been made possible by that one song and a "fateful", almost-cancelled visit to Edith Piaf's home 50 years ago tomorrow. Half a century later, he says, he misses many loved ones who are no longer alive but, otherwise, he can honestly say that he regrets "rien".