Books, Arts & Manners: The French Connection

Jazz moved up from New Orleans to Chicago, New York, eventually all points of the compass—and then seemed to perish in the maw of the Depression. But when, in the mid 1930s, Americans rediscovered their own music, France had already provided its explication de texte in Hugues Panassie’s Le Jazz Hot. During those lean years, expatriate and peripatetic black musicians had found a home in France. These musicians had moved to friendlier shores because they were tired of playing for coffee, and/or being subjected to the indignities of Jim Crow. They also enjoyed the adulation of French musicians who became their avid students and of a listening public that crowded the Paris boîtes to applaud them.

The most notable of these musicians was Benny Carter—a great arranger and alto saxophonist who could also rank with the best on clarinet and trumpet. Lacking the showmanship of Duke Ellington, Carter had never quite made it in the States, but in France and England he was a titan. Coleman Hawkins, who had revolutionized the style and technique of the tenor sax, remained in Paris until the outbreak of World War II. And there were many others. Until the arrival of these jazzmen, French musicians had learned their jazz from a study of recordings, and from the tours of American bands such as those of Will Marion Cook and Sam Wooding.

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Ralph de Toledano

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Jazz moved up from New Orleans to Chicago, New York, eventually all points of the compass—and then seemed to perish in the maw of the Depression. But when, in the mid 1930s, Americans rediscovered their own music, France had already provided its explication de texte in Hugues Panassie’s Le Jazz Hot. During those lean years, expatriate and peripatetic black musicians had found a home in France. These musicians had moved to friendlier shores because they were tired of playing for coffee, and/or being subjected to the indignities of Jim Crow. They also enjoyed the adulation of French musicians who became their avid students and of a listening public that crowded the Paris boîtes to applaud them.

The most notable of these musicians was Benny Carter—a great arranger and alto saxophonist who could also rank with the best on clarinet and trumpet. Lacking the showmanship of Duke Ellington, Carter had never quite made it in the States, but in France and England he was a titan. Coleman Hawkins, who had revolutionized the style and technique of the tenor sax, remained in Paris until the outbreak of World War II. And there were many others. Until the arrival of these jazzmen, French musicians had learned their jazz from a study of recordings, and from the tours of American bands such as those of Will Marion Cook and Sam Wooding.