Hugues Panassié

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Hugues Panassié (1912-1974) was a French jazz critic and producer. His most famous works were Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music and The Real Jazz, published in 1936 and 1942, respectively.

He is also remembered for financing a number of jazz records by artists such as Sidney Bechet and Tommy Ladnier.

Panassié was an admirer of the "hot" style of jazz music played by Louis Armstrong in the 1930s. He famously dismissed bebop as "a form of music distinct from jazz."

Panassié was the founding president of Hot Club de France (1932). During World War II he allegedly used records as a way to defy Nazi authority in France. His friend, American Mezz Mezzrow, describes one of Panassié's memorable achievements in his autobiography Really the Blues as follows:

"[The Nazi censor] was shown a record labeled La Tristesse de St. Louis, and Hugues explained helpfully that it was a sad song written about poor Louie the Fourteenth, lousy with that old French tradition. What the Kultur-hound didn't know was that underneath the phony label was a genuine Victor one, giving Louis Armstrong as the recording artist and stating the real name of the number -- St. Louis Blues."