A symbol of French realist song in the first half of the twentieth century,
Fréhel scored many hits with her darker, streetwise lyrics. Born in Paris on
July 13, 1891, Marguerite Boulc'h was the daughter of a Breton couple from
Finistère, her father an invalid railway worker and her mother a janitor. She
began singing in bars at an early age, and worked as a delivery girl, then as a
door-to-door saleswoman, when she met Caroline Otero, known as the "Belle
Otero", who nicknamed her "Pervenche". She made a name for herself in 1905, and
in 1908 recorded her first album under this na...