Yvette Horner born 22 September 1922

Yvette Horner (22 September 1922 – 11 June 2018) was a French accordionist, pianist and composer known for performing with the Tour de France during the 1950s and 1960s. During her 70-year long career, she gave more than two thousand concerts and released around 150 records, selling a total of 30 million copies.

Yvette Marie Eugénie Hornère was born in Tarbes, south-west France, where her maternal grandparents ran the Italianate Théatre Impérial. Her father, Louis Hornère, was a building contractor. Yvette trained as a classical pianist but was made to switch to the accordion by her mother, who sensed a commercial opportunity (and encouraged her to change her surname to Horner). “I cried for three years,” she recalled. At 26, she won the World Accordionist Federation’s world cup in Lausanne, the first woman to do so. She was a versatile player, as at home playing Bach or free-form jazz as with the popular airs of the time. In 1950, she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque de l'académie Charles-Cros for her album Le Jardin secret d'Yvette Horner, a recital of classical works performed on piano and accordion.

Initially, she played in cinemas and casinos, but her breakthrough came in 1952 when the Calor company, which made electric irons, suggested she travel with them in the Tour de France’s publicity caravan. “I stood on the roof of the car, leaning on the seat, strapped in, with an instrument weighing almost 15kg,” she recalled. “I played all along the course, without stopping on the mountain climbs or the descents. Sometimes I had to take mosquitos out of my nose, sometimes I was grubbier than the stage winner, and when it rained I had only a hat.” When she was completely worn out, she would put a life-size model of herself on the car roof (it was auctioned off for 2,200 euros in 2005) – until the crowds cottoned on.

She was awarded the Grand Prix International d'Accordion de Paris in 1953.In the evenings, after attempting to find something to eat “in a bar on a back road” to avoid crowds – and drying out the keys of the accordion if it had been raining and they had begun to stick – she would play again in the centre of the stage town until 2am. The alarm would ring at 6am and she would be back on the road again, driven by her husband, the former Bordeaux Girondins soccer player René Dresch, who had quit his career to support her. Dresch died in 1986; Horner often expressed her regret that the marriage produced no children.

                  Here's "Vals Ds As" from above EP

Horner left the Tour in 1965 – conscious that accordion music was about to be overtaken by rock – but her contacts with the bike race lingered: when she sold her millionth record, Anquetil came to celebrate; later, she played for him at a celebratory evening at his home village in Normandy, the kind of local bal musette where the accordion was de rigueur. She had bought a house in the Paris suburb of Nogent-sur-Marne, which was reported to be accordion-themed from top to bottom; in Nogent, she was seen replicating her Tour act on top of a lorry during the Fete du Petit Vin Blanc.

In the 1980s, she died her hair from brown to red and started wearing more extravagant stage outfits (such as the famous "Eiffel Tower Dress") created by fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, who made her one of his muses. In 1987, she became the godmother of the Doudeville Accordion Club, the Cany-Accordeon-Club, directed by its founder, Annie Lacour, who worked at the Schola Cantorum de Paris for five years.

Late in her career, she became something of a national treasure with a slightly camp edge, playing at the Bastille on 14 July 1989 in a red, white and blue dress with the national jazz orchestra to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the revolution. She appeared on the TV rock show Taratata, duetting with Boy George on Gershwin’s Summertime, collaborated with the choreographer Maurice Béjart, and was seen in a revue at the Casino de Paris, dressed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, who was to design the sleeve of her final album, Hors Norme (2012).

Her memoirs, Le Biscuit dans la Poche, were published in 2005 and during that same year she sold her house in Nogent-sur-Marne, where she had lived for about fifty years. She auctioned off personal items, including her collection of Jean Paul Gaultier dresses. The sale was held for the benefit of an association for the fight against cancer. After the sale of her Nogent house, the artist lived in an elderly people's residence in Paris. In 2011, the accordionist is invited by singer Julien Doré to participate in the recording of his album Bichon. She also gave her last concert the same year.

(Edited from The Guardian & Wikipedia)