Regine, disco pioneer and nightclub queen, dies at 92

Paris: French singer and actress Regine, who claimed the invention of the modern discotheque and once ran a nightclub empire from Paris to Los Angeles, died on Sunday aged 92, her grand-daughter told AFP.

Regine, born Regina Zylberberg in Belgium, 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 said: "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 "queen of the night", opened several more venues, including "Regine’s" in New York in the 1970s, and others in Miami, Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles. "Regine left us peacefully at 11 am (0900 GMT) on this May 1," her grand-daughter Daphne Rotcajg said.