New York City (circa 1946–1948)
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Hugues Panassié | |
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![]() Hugues Panassié, Red Prysock, and Tiny Grimes New York City (circa 1946–1948) William P. Gottlieb, photo |
Hugues Panassié (27 February 1912 in Paris – 8 December 1974 in Montauban) [1] was a French critic, record producer, and impresario of traditional jazz. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Panassié was born in Paris. When he was fourteen, he was stricken with polio, which limited his extracurricular physical activities. He took up the saxophone and fell in love with jazz in the late 1920s. [lower-roman 1] Panassié was the founding president of the Hot Club de France in 1932. He produced recording sessions in New York featuring Mezz Mezzrow and Tommy Ladnier from November 1938 to January 1939.
During World War II, the Germans occupied the northern half of France beginning June 1940. The Nazis regarded jazz as low music — music from an inferior people. Jacques Demêtre, in the 2014 book by Steve Cushing, Pioneers of the Blues Revival, said that people had expected the Germans to ban jazz entirely. But instead, they only banned American jazz and American tunes. [11] Demetre explained that many American standards were in French with alternate titles. Panassié, for example, managed to keep broadcasting American jazz on his radio station submitting to censors obtuse French translations of American song titles, and even relabeling records. Panassié's friend Mezz Mezzrow describes a particular example in his 1946 autobiography Really the Blues:
In a changing world of jazz, Panassié was an ardent exponent of traditional jazz — strictly Dixieland. He harbored a particular love of style similar to that of Louis Armstrong from the 1930s. Panassié criticized West Coast jazz as inauthentic, partly because most musicians were white and also sounded white. [13] [14] In his book, The Real Jazz, Panassié ranked Benny Goodman as a detestable clarinetist whose sterile intonation was inferior to black players Jimmy Noone and Omer Simeon. Mezz Mezzrow became Panassié's lone example of a white musician who played jazz authentically. [15] Panassié dismissed bebop as "a form of music distinct from jazz." [14] [lower-roman 2] [lower-roman 3]
As an extremely gifted musician, Parker gradually gave up jazz in favor of bop …
He [Parker] could play fine jazz in his early days
A gifted musician [Miles Davis], but one who by now has entirely deviated from jazz to 'cool' music.
It would be truer to say that he [Thelonious Monk] was an initiator of bop—for whereas his music harmonically resembles bop, rhythmically it is not. He is an eccentric musician who has strayed far from jazz, but has never completely turned his back on it as the bop players have.
— Guide to Jazz (1956)
In 1974, he accused Miles Davis, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, and others as being "traitors to the cause of true black music," that, according to Panassié, they claimed to support. [lower-roman 4]
Some historians opine that Panassié hurt musicians by creating a wedge between blacks and whites by his insistence that black jazz was superior. Some authors ridicule his harsh attacks against more open jazz critics, who he characterized in his Bulletin du Hot Club de France as being full of "crass ignorance," "thick incompetence," and "triumphant stupidity." [lower-roman 5] His ad hominem attacks included phrases that translate to "repugnant glavioteur," [lower-alpha 1] "formidable imbecile," and "donkey of the pen." [lower-alpha 2] [lower-roman 6] [lower-roman 7]
In addition to being a strong exponent of Dixieland jazz, and a harsh critic of jazz musicians who strayed from it, Panassié was a far-right monarchist who belonged to the anti-Semitic organisation Action Française and wrote a jazz column for the extreme-right magazine L'Insurgé. [15] [16]
In 1956, RCA Victor published an LP record, Guide to Jazz (LPM 1393), a compilation including 16 recordings by prominent jazz artists with liner notes by Panassiè.
Books by Panassié [1]
Panassié spent five months in New York City in the company of Madeleine Gautier, his assistant. In 1949, they married, returned to France, and settled in Montauban at 65 Faubourg du Moustier.
Thomas James Ladnier was an American jazz trumpeter. Hugues Panassié – an influential French critic, jazz historian, and renowned exponent of New Orleans jazz – rated Ladnier, sometime on or before 1956, second only to Louis Armstrong.
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Milton Mesirow, better known as Mezz Mezzrow, was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist from Chicago, Illinois. He is remembered for organizing and financing recording sessions with Tommy Ladnier and Sidney Bechet. He recorded with Bechet as well and briefly acted as manager for Louis Armstrong. Mezzrow is equally known as a colorful character, as portrayed in his autobiography, Really the Blues, co-written with Bernard Wolfe and published in 1946.
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The Hot Club de France is a French organization of jazz fans dedicated to the promotion of "traditional" jazz, swing, and blues. It was founded in 1931 in Paris, France, by five students of the Lycée Carnot. In 1928, Jacques Bureaux, Hugues Panassie, Charles Delaunay, Jacques Auxenfans, and Elvin Dirat came together to listen to jazz and, later, promote its acceptance in France. The point was to make the public aware of jazz and to defend and promote the style in the face of all opposition. The club began in the fall of 1931 as the Jazz Club Universitaire, as the members were all still students; it was reborn and reimagined in 1932 as the Hot Club de France.
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Jimmy Ryan's was a jazz club in New York City, USA, located at 53 West 52nd Street from 1934 to 1962 and 154 West 54th Street from 1962–1983. It was a venue for performances of Dixieland jazz.
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Inline citations from Bulletin du Hot Club de France; ISSN 0755-7272
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