Patachou

Henriette Ragon, born on 10 June 1918 in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, France, was a French singer and actress who performed professionally under the name Patachou. She died on 30 April 2015 at the age of 96. Before her career in entertainment, she held a succession of jobs including typist, factory worker, shoeseller, and antique dealer.

In 1948, Ragon and her husband Jean Billon took ownership of a Montmartre cabaret-restaurant named Patachou. It was there that she began singing, and journalists adopted the name of the establishment as her stage name — derived from pâte-à-choux, meaning cream puff dough. The venue became notable for an unconventional tradition: Patachou would cut the neckties of customers who were reluctant to participate in the singing and staple them to the ceiling, a practice that produced a décor of hundreds of hanging neckties. Thomas Dewey and Errol Flynn were among those whose ties she collected. The couple's son, Pierre Billon, later achieved recognition as a singer in the 1970s and wrote the song J'ai oublié de vivre for Johnny Hallyday.

The cabaret played a significant role in the early career of Georges Brassens. Patachou was the first performer to sing several of his compositions, including Le bricoleur and La chasse aux papillons, and she and Brassens performed the duet Maman, papa together. On the evening she first sang his songs, she invited her audience to remain after the show to meet the songwriter, and Brassens took the Patachou stage for the first time, performing Le Gorille and P..de toi. Her championing of his work is credited with helping to bring him to wider public attention before he became famous in his own right.

Patachou's performing career extended well beyond Montmartre. She appeared at the Bobino music hall in Montparnasse and toured throughout France before expanding her reach internationally. From 1953 onward she performed at venues including the London Palladium, the Waldorf Astoria, and Carnegie Hall, and toured extensively across the United States. Her first recordings were released in 1952 on the Philips label, followed by albums for CBS beginning in the mid-1950s and recordings on the Audio Fidelity label in the latter part of that decade. From the early 1970s she toured Japan and Sweden, where her distinctly Parisian style found a receptive audience.

On Broadway, Patachou performed between 1958 and 1964, appearing in International Soiree and starring in Folies Bergère in 1964. Her film work spanned several decades, beginning with the 1952 production Jouons le jeu and including roles in Women of Paris (1953), Napoléon (1955) as Madame Sans-Gêne, and French Cancan (1955) as Yvette Guilbert. Later screen credits included Pola X (1999), Drôle de Félix (2000), Belphégor, le fantôme du Louvre (2001), and San-Antonio (2004), among numerous other French film and television productions.

On 1 January 2009, Patachou was named an Officier of the Légion d'honneur.