Jeannine "Mimi" Perrin was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 pianist and singer, and translator.

Perrin received private musical instruction, including piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 as a child and pursued English studies

English studies

English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...

 at Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

. In 1949, she contracted tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 and was treated at a sanatorium

Sanatorium

A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

. She recovered and hit the French jazz scene in the cabarets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Saint-Germain-des-Prés is an area of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France, located around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés....

, coming to prominence in jazz clubs as a pianist in her own trio. She met her husband, an amateur guitar and bass player. Between 1956 and 1958, she was a member of Blossom Dearie

Blossom Dearie

Blossom Dearie was an American jazz singer and pianist, often performing in the bebop genre and remembered for her girlish voice.-Early career:...

's vocal group Blue Stars of France, but worked mostly in studios as a background singer to yé-yé

Yé-yé

Yé-yé was a style of pop music that emerged from France, Québec and Spain in the early 1960s. The term "yé-yé" derived from "yeah! yeah!" The style expanded worldwide, due to the success of figures such as the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg....

 singers and bands.

In 1959, she formed the vocal sextet Les Double Six

Les Double Six

Les Double Six was a French vocal jazz group established in 1959 by Mimi Perrin. The group established an international reputation in the early 1960s. The name of the group was an allusion to the fact that the sextet used overdubbing techniques to achieve twelve-part singing...

, which included, among others, Louis and Monique Aldebert, Monique and Roger Guérin

Roger Guérin

Roger Guérin was a French jazz trumpeter and singer.Initially a violinist, Guérin studied trumpet and cornet at the Paris Conservatory and won a first prize there as a teenager....

, Christiane Legrand

Christiane Legrand

Christiane Legrand was a French singer.Legrand was born in Paris, the daughter of film composer Raymond Legrand, who wrote "Irma la Douce."She studied piano and classical music from the time she was four...

, Ward Swingle

Ward Swingle

Ward Swingle is an American vocalist and jazz musician.Swingle was born in Mobile, Alabama. He studied music, particularly jazz, from a very young age. He was playing in Mobile-area Big Bands before finishing high school. After high school, Swingle graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Cincinnati...

, Eddy Louiss

Eddy Louiss

Eddy Louiss is a French jazz musician.His primary instrument is the Hammond organ. As a vocalist, he was a member of Les Double Six of Paris from 1961 through 1963.He has worked with Kenny Clarke, René Thomas, and Jean-Luc Ponty...

 and Bernard Lubat. The band name alluded to the fact that the group used overdubbing

Overdubbing

Overdubbing is a technique used by recording studios to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance....

 in the studio to sing twelve-part songs. The group oriented itself to the vocalese

Vocalese

Vocalese is a style or genre of jazz singing wherein lyrics are written for melodies that were originally part of an all-instrumental composition or improvisation. Whereas scat singing uses improvised nonsense syllables, such as "bap ba dee dot bwee dee" in solos, vocalese uses lyrics, either...

 of King Pleasure

King Pleasure

King Pleasure was a jazz vocalist and an early master of vocalese, where a singer sings words to a famous instrumental solo....

 on one side, and Lambert

Dave Lambert

David Alden Lambert , was an American jazz lyricist, singer, and an originator of vocalese. He was best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Lambert spent a lifetime experimenting with the human voice, and expanding the possibilities of its use within jazz.Lambert's band debut...

, Hendricks

Jon Hendricks

Jon Hendricks is an American jazz lyricist and singer. He is considered one of the originators of vocalese, which adds lyrics to existing instrumental songs and replaces many instruments with vocalists...

 & Ross

Annie Ross

Annie Ross is an English jazz singer, and actress, best known as a member of the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.-Early years:...

 on the other, and was quite successful in the early 1960s. Les Double Six completed several European tours and also traveled to North America, recording with Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, and Ray Charles

Ray Charles

Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

. Perrin was the leader and principal soloist in the group and established herself solo with John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

's song "Naima" "as one of the great jazz singers." From her ensemble eventually emerged the Swingle Singers led by Ward Swingle after he left the Double Six. A later group, founded in 1966 by Perrin, did not achieve her previous success, and she abandoned music after another bout of tuberculosis.

From 1972 onwards, she worked as a translator of science-fiction and fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 stories by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny

Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...

, Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and...

, James Blish

James Blish

James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...

, and Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz

Dean Ray Koontz is a prolific American author best known for his novels which could be described broadly as suspense thrillers. He also frequently incorporates elements of horror, science fiction, mystery, and satire. A number of his books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List, with...

 among others. In the 1980s and 1990, she translated more mainstream novels (including Alice Walker

Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...

's The Colour Purple and Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich

Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...

' Tracks and Love Medicine

Love Medicine

Love Medicine is Louise Erdrich’s first novel, published in 1984. Erdrich revised and expanded the novel for an edition issued in 1993, and this version was considered the definitive edition until 2009 when Erdrich re-edited it...

) as well as biographies of Nina Simone

Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon , better known by her stage name Nina Simone , was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music...

, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg

Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

. She was also known for her French rendition of the novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s by John le Carré

John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

 since 1989, and later by Ha Jin

Ha Jin

Jīn Xuěfēi is a contemporary Chinese-American writer and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin . Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin.-Early life:...

, with her daughter Isabelle.

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