Composer of N0n, Je ne Regrette Rien, Charles Dumont, dies at 95

Charles Dumont composed melodies for French and international stars ranging from Dalida to Jacques Brel, Juliette Greco and Barbra Streisand

- Jon Henley

But the singer-songwriter, who has died aged 95, will for ever be associated with one song in particular. Dumont, a little-known musician and trumpeter by training, was aged 31 when, he knocked on the door of perhaps France's best-known singer on the Boulevard Lannes in Paris in October 1960, along with the lyricist Michel Vaucaire.

"She'd already said no to three of my songs," he said in 2013. "I didnft want to go back, but Michel-persuaded me." Ill and exhausted, Edith Piaf, who had collapsed onstage months earlier and would die three years later, was disinclined to see the pair.