PARISIAN THOROUGHFARE – VARIOUS ARTISTS

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it”
Ernest Hemingway – Paris est une fête / A Moveable Feast, 1960

PARISIAN THOROUGHFARE - VARIOUS ARTISTS

There can be no doubt that Paris love affair with jazz has been lastingly beautiful. Studded with “I love you, me neither” periods common to all long idylls — the first time there was “love at first sight” dates from the Great War — the affair has always been passionate, and impassioned…
In the 1950s and 1960s, Paris was a global jazz hub with many top jazz clubs and a wide range of jazz musicians from across the world taking up residence on the hottest and hippest place on the planet, where legends played, mentoring and nurturing the first generation of French jazzmen – in every bar across the city… All those musicians, all those moments – and many more! — made jazz history the length of the river Seine. Here they are, close to the ear, in the collection called “Parisian Thoroughfare”, a treat for the connoisseur, and a delight for all who ask only that listening be a pleasure…A good many events, chance meetings and heart-throbs bear witness to this: in concerts, the capital’s American friends made if their duty to give audiences all they could wish for, so high were they held in esteem; in front of the microphone, when the situation or context was foreign to their habits, their spirits were raised considerably: Miles Davis accompanied a film; Bill Coleman, thirty-five years later, joined Stéphane Grappelli in the studios; under the watchful eye of kenny Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie duelled with Johnny Griffin, while Art Blakey, his heart softened by his reunion with Bud Powell, was welcoming Barney Wilen with open arms; and Lionel Hampton, thanks to the arrangements of Christian Chevalier, astonished the public all over again. Sidney Bechet, Don Byas, Sonny Criss and Rhoda Scott even forgot to return across the Atlantic…
After all, they’d found partners to their liking, haan’t they? For jazz had struck on the Old Continent, generating a crowd of creators who took to the task of filtering the colours of Afro-American music through their own, personal prisms. Is it necessary to quote Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, matchless and unequalled, or Jean-Luc Ponty, Claude Bolling, Eddy Louiss, Pierre Michelot, Michel Legrand…?