Exactly what is goin' on?

Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On/What's Happening Brother"
An excerpt from the recently released DVD of some of Marvin's greatest live performances on TV and film, Real Thing: In Performance 1964-1981. This live performance comes from the long out-of-circulation 1973 film, Save The Children, and features James Jamerson on bass.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Down By the Riverside"
A riveting performance by one of the gospel greats. Check out her fluid, stinging electric guitar solos and you'll hear why Carl Perkins always identified her as having been a major influence on his approach to the instrument.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Up Above My Head"

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Didn't It Rain"
Performing before a British audience, Sister tears it up vocally and gets real gone on the guitar.

Interlude: Amadou et Mariam, "Je Pense a Toi"

'The Soul of Paris'

Born December 19, 1915 in Paris, Edith Giovanna Gassion was born and raised among immigrants in Paris's Belleville district. At age 14 she joined her street acrobat father in his performances all over France, making her public singing debut as part of his show. In 1935 nightclub owner Louis Leplée discovered her singing in the Pigalle district, became her mentor, launched her professional career in his club Le Gerny off the Champs-Élysées, gave her the nickname "La môme Piaf" (or, "The Waif Sparrow," "The Little Sparrow"), and steered her first recording, 1936's "Les Mômes de la cloche." After being accused and acquitted of the 1936 murder of Leplée, the singer underwent, in effect, a public relations makeover under the guidance of her lover, Raymond Asso, who changed her name to Edith Piaf. Over the next few years she became France's most popular entertainer, and following WWII her popularity spread around the globe, partly on the strength of her most enduring song, "La vie en rose," which she wrote in 1945. In 1946, Piaf was introduced to a group of young singers called Les Compagnons de la Chanson. Taking charge of their career, as she had done with her young protegé, Yves Montand (whom she had met and took as a lover and protégé after meeting him on the set of the 1945 film, Étoile sans lumière), Piaf recorded a single with the group, titled "Les trois cloches." The song was an enormous hit, selling more than one million copies, and Piaf invited Les Compagnons de la Chanson to accompany her on her first American tour the following year, and they also appeared with her in director Georges Freidland's 1947 film, Neuf garcons...un coeur.

Piaf's tour of the United States proved to be a daunting challenge. While the young street singer from Belleville had managed to forge a career for herself amidst Paris's beau-monde, American audiences were less receptive to Piaf's melodramatic style. Piaf's first concerts at the Playhouse cabaret in New York failed to attract large audiences and the singer was on the verge of giving up and returning to Europe when she came across a rapturous review of her concert in a major New York paper. Encouraged by this enthusiastic appraisal of her work, Piaf decided to extend her American stay. She was booked into a popular, upscale cabaret in New York, The Versailles, for a week of shows that caused such a clamor for tickets that her stay was extended to four months. In addition to two famous Carnegie Hall concerts, in 1956 and 1957, her five wildly received concerts at the Paris Olympia concert hall (1955, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1962) became the stuff of legend, with the 1961 concert marking the debut of one of her landmark songs, "Non, je ne regrette rien." She died of liver cancer on October 10, 1963, at Plascassier, on the French Riviera; on the same day death came to one of her early benefactors, the poet-novelist-dramatist-film director-graphic artist-intellectual gadfly Jean Cocteau, whose 1940 play Le Bel Indifférent had provided Piaf with one of her first successful public appearances as a performer (Cocteau's biographer claims the play had been written in part to break up Piaf and her lover, actor-singer Paul Meurisse, whom Cocteau regarded as a louse unworthy of Piaf's affections—he even had the audacity to cast the pair in the lead roles in which a couple self-destructs on stage). According to legend, on the morning of October 11, 1963, upon receiving word of Piaf's passing, Cocteau said, "Ah, la Piaf est morte. Je peux mourir aussi." ("Ah, Piaf's dead. I can die too."), and then promptly suffered a fatal heart attack.

Denied a funeral mass by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Paris owing to her scandalous lifestyle (marriages, divorces, wed and unwed lovers, alcoholism, drug addiction, et al.), Piaf's funeral procession through the streets of Paris drew thousands of mourners, with more than 100,000 fans attending the funeral service at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Her friend Marlene Deitrich, whom she had met in New York during the Versailles triumph, and who served as Matron of Honor at Piaf's 1952 marriage to singer Jacques Pills, declared the Little Sparrow to be "the soul of Paris." Many of her some 80 self-penned songs, and certainly those written for her, such as "Non, je ne regrette rien," sum up Piaf's approach to and philosophy of life. One of the most acute is one of the least known: "A quoi ca sert l'amour?" ("What's the Point of Love?)," a duet with her second husband, actor Theo Sarapo, who was with her when she died. Sarapo put her corpse in his car at Plascassier and drove back to Paris in order to make it seem as if she had died in the City of Lights: "faithful to no man, but ever faithful to Paris," as the critic Stuart Jeffries wrote in The Guardian (8 November 2003). Not much of a vocalist (or an actor, for that matter), Serapo nonetheless delivers the sentiment that pretty much says it all about the life Piaf lived without regret: "If I have understood correctly/without the pleasures and pains of love/frankly we have lived for nothing."

Possibly the earliest film footage of The Little Sparrow, shot on 18 December 1935, the day before her 20th birthday.

Edith Piaf. "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1961)
Written and recorded in 1960, "Non, je ne regrette rien" ("No, I regret nothing") is one of the Great Piaf's signature songs. This performance from 1961 features the song's composer, Charles Dumont, on piano; the defiant lyrics, so fitting for Piaf, are from the pen of Michel Vaucaire.

Edith Piaf, "L'Hymne à l'Amour"
C'est magnifique!

Edith Piaf, "La Vie en Rose"
From the 1947 film, Neuf garçons...un coeur (Nine boys...a heart), directed by Georges Friedland (also Freedland), starring Edith Piaf and Lucien Baroux. The story takes place on Christmas Eve and involves a dream of waking up in Paradise.

Edith Piaf, "Un refrain courait dans la rue," from the film, Neuf garçons...un coeur (Nine boys...a heart)

Neuf garçons...un coeur (Nine boys...a heart)
The touching final scene.

"Les Trois Cloches"
Edith Piaf and Les Compagnons de la Chanson
Based on an old Swiss folk song, "Les Trois Cloches" was first rewritten in French in 1940 as "Les Trois Cloches" by Jean Villard, alias Gilles (1895-1982). Piaf and Les Compagnons de la Chanson recorded it in 1945. This clip is undated. Les Compagnons also appeared with Piaf in the 1947 film, Neuf garçons...un coeur (Nine boys...a heart), scenes from which appear above. The outstanding plaintive voiced lead tenor of Les Compagnons is Fred Mella, leader of the group through its entire near-four-decade history. Rewritten in English and recorded in 1959 by The Browns (produced by Chet Atkins) as "The Three Bells," this song became The Browns' biggest and most beloved hit—10 weeks atop the country chart, four weeks at #1 on the pop chart.

The Browns, "The Three Bells"
And here's The Browns' (Maxine, Bonnie, Jim Ed Brown) version of "Les Trois Cloiches," "The Three Bells," recorded live on The Jimmy Dean Show.

Mary Hopkin, "Goodbye" As her followup to "Those Were The Days," British thrush Mary Hopkin came back strong in 1969 with this Paul McCartney-written and -produced single. Note that the video includes indications that the Paul McCartney seen working with Hopkin in the video is an impersonator replacing the real Paul, who, of course, was dead by the time this record was cut. Which prompts one YouTube commentor to observe, "If Paul was replaced, the man who replaced him was better than Paul." We say, whomever penned the lyric, "Songs that lingered on my lips/excite me now and linger on my mind," is brilliant, no matter his identity.

"Boys, are you buzzing?"
The Beatles, "You're Gonna Lose That Girl"
Not only a great Beatles song, but one of director Richard Lester's finest moments as well—beautifully photographed, energetically edited, full of life—one of many indelible scenes from Help!

The Beatles, "Eleanor Rigby"
The stunning visual evocation of this eerie, enigmatic song at the start of the Beatles' animated classic, Yellow Submarine.