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Mireille Mathieu was born and raised in Avignon,
Vaucluse, France, the eldest daughter of a family of
fourteen children.
The youngest brother born after she had moved to Paris. Her father Roger was from Avignon, and her mother Marcelle-Sophie Poirier came to Avignon from Dunkirk in 1944, as a refugee from World
War II. Roger, with his father Arcade, ran a stonemason shop outside the Saint-Véran Cemetery in Avignon, which is still in business today.The family lived in poverty, and were dependent on government housing.
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Roger had once dreamed of becoming a singer,
but his father Arcade disapproved, inspiring him to have
one of his children learn to sing with him in church. Mireille's first paid performance before an audience, at age four, was rewarded with a lollipop. Another defining moment was seeing Édith Piaf sing on television.
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Mireille performed poorly in elementary school due to
dyslexia,
requiring an extra year to graduate. Born left
handed, her teachers used
a ruler to strike her hand each time she was caught writing with it. She
became right handed, although her left hand remains quite animated
while singing. She has a fantastic memory, and never uses a prompter
on stage. Abandoning higher education, she began work in a local factory
in Montfavet at age fourteen (1960), where she helped with the family In
come and paid for singing lessons. Very popular at work, she often sang
songs at lunch, or while working. Like her parents, she is a short woman
at five-feet in height. Her sister Monique (French pronunciation: [monikə])
began work at the same factory a few months later, both given bicycles on
credit to commute with, making for very long days.
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First public appearances
First public appearances
Mathieu began her career
by participating in singing contests. Her private singing lessons
were from Madame Laure Collière, who was also a piano teacher in Avignon. Self described as very stubborn in her autobiography, she wrote about singing love songs that the audience thought were inappropriate for a young girl. Thus, losing to Michèle Torr in 1962 during Avignon's first On Chante dans mon Quartier contest, and losing again in 1963. In 1964, though, she won the event with the Édith Piaf song "La Vie en rose.“ Her win got her a pre-audition on the televised talent show Jeu de la Chance in Paris, on which amateur singers competed for audience votes. Her participation and train fare, arranged by Raoul Colombe, the deputy mayor of Avignon. Accompanied by a pianist and dressed in black, like Piaf, she sang two Piaf songs to the audition judges and left dispirited.
Non-French cannot hear it, but Parisians at the studio made fun of her Provença l accent, and her dyslexia scrambled words. For example, her sister and current manager, Monique is called "Matite" because Mireille couldn't pronounce "petite" as a child.
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During a 1965 summer gala, added to the
Enrico Macias concert by Raoul Colombe (her first manager),
she met her future manager Johnny Stark. Mireille and her father both thought he was an American based on his mannerisms, and they nicknamed him l'Américain. Stark had worked with singers such as Yves Montand, and the relationship between him and Mathieu is often described as resembling that between Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. Stark is credited with making her a star and the successor to Piaf. By 1968, under his careful management, she was France's most popular singer.
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On Sunday 21 November 1965, Mathieu performed live
on Jeu de la
Chance, a talent segmentof the
popular French program "Télé-Dimanche.“
Both the studio audience and telephone voters gave her a slight lead over
five-time winner Georgette Lemaire,so the producers called it a tie.
Johnny Stark officially became her manager that night, and with his
longtime assistant Nadine Joubert, helped prepare Mireille to win the
contest the following week. In a later interview, she underscored the
importance of the event: "For me, Paris was the end of the world.
I never took a train or saw a camera before. I did not know what the
outcome of the adventure would be."
