Gribouille

Marie-France Gaite, better known as Gribouille was a singer, musician, and songwriter. As a teenager, she suffered from a mental disorder, and for a time was confined against her will to a psychiatric hospital in Lyon. With medication, she was able to function well enough to leave her hometown and she made her way to Paris. Gribouille, as she was called since her school days, is French for naive and foolishly happy people. Likely to throw themselves into a river to keep from getting wet in the rain. In Paris she met Jean Cocteau while she was drawing art on the sidewalk with chalk. He drew a portrait of her and added "To my friend Gribouille." She carefully added an 'e' to ami, embarrassed that Cocteau thought she was a boy. She had a very androgynous appearance, and a deep voice, and Cocteau got her work singing in a cabaret. Since she was at the bottom, even these sleazy cabaret acts were a step up for her. In 1963, through sheer talent and her intense persona, she joined the roster of Pathé Records. She was hailed as the new Édith Piaf, and also compared with Barbara. Charles Dumont, who wrote many of Piaf's hits, also began writing songs for her. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gribouille) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)