Perrin received private musical instruction, including piano as a child and pursued
English studies at
Sorbonne. In 1949, she contracted
tuberculosis and was treated at a
sanatorium. She recovered and hit the French jazz scene in the cabarets 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's vocal group Blue Stars of France, but worked mostly in studios as a background singer to
yé-yé singers and bands. In 1959, she formed the vocal sextet
Les Double Six, which included, among others, Louis and
Monique Aldebert,
Roger Guérin,
Christiane Legrand,
Ward Swingle,
Eddy Louiss and
Bernard Lubat. The band name alluded to the fact that the group used
overdubbing in the studio to sing twelve-part songs. The group oriented itself to the
vocalese of
King Pleasure on one side, and
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross 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,
Dizzy Gillespie, and
Ray Charles. Perrin was the leader and principal soloist in the group and established herself solo with
John Coltrane'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 stories by
Roger Zelazny,
Robert Sheckley,
James Blish, and
Dean Koontz, among others. In the 1980s and 1990, she translated more mainstream novels (including
Alice Walker's
The Color Purple and
Louise Erdrich's
Tracks and
Love Medicine) as well as biographies of
Nina Simone, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and
Steven Spielberg. She was also known for her French rendition of the
novels by
John le Carré since 1989, and later by
Ha Jin, with her daughter Isabelle. ==References==