PARIS: French singer and actress Regine, who laid claim to the invention of the modern discotheque and once ran a nightclub empire from Paris to Los Angeles, died on Sunday aged 92, her granddaughter told AFP.
Regine, born Regina Zylberberg in Belgium to Jewish Polish parents, opened her first club in Paris’s Latin Quarter in the 1950s, replacing the juke-box, ubiquitous in dance venues at the time, with turntables and disc jockeys.
The new format, she often said, justified her claim to “the invention of the discotheque”.
She famously told AFP in 2015: “If you can’t dance, you can’t make love.”
The new discos caught on with the jet set and Regine, who became known as the…
