Talk:Hugues Panassié
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[edit] Large unwikified text
Here is a bunch of unwikified text added by an anonymous contributor. I have doubts about his copyright status, so I've added it here until someone can confirm. —Cleared as filed. 19:00, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Hughes Panassie and Jazz-Hot: Beginnings The Defender of Jazz
In 1926—Hughes Panassié, the precocious fourteen-year-old son of a French manganese magnate, fell ill at his home in Livinhac-le-Haut in southern France. As the illness progressed, the dreaded symptoms of what was one of the most feared diseases of the century began to emerge—young Hughes had contracted polio. During his convalescence in Paris under the care of the famous Charcot student, Joseph François Félix Babinski, Panassié filled his days listening to music on the new record player his father had bought him. Ever more fascinated with the workings of the art form as he struggled against the wasting effects of the disease, he took up the saxophone under the tutelage of Josephine Baker’s former saxophonist, Christian Wagner. In turn, Wagner recommended various jazz records then available in France, including works by Frankie Trumbauer, Red Nichols, and the Paul Whiteman orchestra. Though the illness ended up permanently damaging Panassié’s mobility, compelling him to use canes for the rest of his life, it did give him an early chance to attune his ear and his intellect to the music that would be his life’s passion.
By 1928, supported primarily by his father’s fortune, Panassié had taken up residence in Paris and become a regular at jazz events around the city. In that year, the trumpeter Phillippe Brun revealed the existence of Louis Armstrong to Panassié, as well as a host of other black jazz musicians who, because of the American record labels’ racially-regimented system of record distribution, were virtually unknown in France. It was at this point that Panassié began to realize that the word “jazz” referred to a stunning range of styles, and, as more American musicians passed through Paris, he started demanding their opinions about jazz, gradually building a formidable knowledge of the music. In 1929, he met the American clarinetist Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, a man who would become a close lifelong friend. Born to Jewish parents, Mezzrow identified totally with African-Americans, moving to Harlem, marrying a black woman, and taking up black traditions and causes as his own. Mezzrow was the first to impress upon Panassié the shocking nature of the inequality between blacks and whites in the United States, and, most importantly, he taught Panassié to distinguish differences between white and black jazz.
Armed with the knowledge passed down to him by his musician mentors (especially Mezzrow) and gained in long hours spent listening to jazz records and concerts, Panassié began to write about the music. His first forays were short but ambitious attempts to describe the mechanisms and meanings behind the music of a culture far removed from his own. Above all, Panassié’s outlook was shaped by his sense that modernity, rationalized, mechanized, and robbed of transcendent meaning, had corrupted the vital essence of the human spirit. Panassié was deeply religious—one contemporary described him as “more Catholic than the Pope”—and he was outraged by the progressive loss of religious faith that seemed to accompany the unfolding of French history. For inspiration, Panassié looked to the noted Thomist theologian Jacques Maritain (first linked to and then expelled from l’Action Française), who had written about the roles that religion could play in a modernity that seemed to toss spirituality aside in favor of a soulless pursuit of utility.
In the face of this perplexing modernity, Panassié took Maritain as a spiritual guide and jazz as a musical one on the path to enlightenment. In jazz, Panassié saw the possibility of an unadulterated expression of humanity. Thus, the artists who most compelled Panassié were the ones who gave the impression of being sincère and sentimental, demonstrating the greatest musical soulfulness. Avoiding the over-intellectualization that plagued European modes of expression, the authentic jazzman—a term Panassié would use in later works—devoted himself entirely to the aesthetic of spontaneous improvisation. Because of their color and history, black Americans (who had invented jazz in the first place) were somehow removed from the poisoned culture of modern western civilization, and consequently could unleash most powerfully this long-lost expression of the human soul. It is important to note this exoticizing of African-Americans as problematic, for while Panassié and his followers saw themselves as liberated in their racial views, their primitivist rhetoric still set blacks apart as fundamentally less advanced than those who were writing about them. Under the tutelage of Mezzrow, Panassié came to believe that traditional New Orleans-style jazz was the purest form of the music; while the successive refinements and evolutions of the swing era still fell under the aegis of the jazz style, they represented its pollution.
The Beginnings of the Hot-Club de France and Jazz Hot
Perhaps most importantly, Panassié was strikingly effective in communicating his simple love for the music through prose. His enthusiasm was infectious, and his observations seemed new and exciting, especially to readers who had rarely before seen jazz treated as thoughtfully. In addition, Panassié’s combination of carefully-cultivated personal connections and financial resources enabled him to be up-to-date on the latest developments in the music, and he gained a reputation for erudite hipness among the followers of his articles in the professional journals Jazz-Tango-Dancing (later simply Jazz-Tango) and La Revue Musicale. As a result, in 1932 it was to him that two young students turned with their aspirations to start a jazz appreciation society, a group where fellow members could mutually strive to better their understanding of le vrai jazz. Panassié agreed to help out, arriving at the first meeting of the “Jazz-Club Universitaire” in St-Cloud with a carton of records and no plan other than to educate his new followers, barely younger than he, and expand their knowledge of the realm of jazz.
Within months, the J-.C.U. had grown beyond anyone’s expectations, and a world of possibilities suddenly seemed to open up to its adherents. Changing its name, at the behest of Panassié, to the “Hot-Club de France,” the group advertised for members in Jazz-Tango, organized listening parties, produced small concerts with French and American musicians, and gathered to exchange records and anecdotes about their beloved music. Under the leadership of Panassié the H.C.F.’s activities multiplied and, before long, it had outgrown its amateurish beginnings. In 1934, the club played a leading role in the organization of Louis Armstrong’s first-ever concert appearances in Paris and the rest of France, and sponsored an entire special issue of Jazz-Tango devoted to Armstrong to commemorate the occasion. The Hot-Club was also the foremost advocate for the development of European talent. In 1934 it established the “Quintette de Hot-Club de France,” a group which would bring the sound of the guitar of gypsy genius Django Reinhardt to the world, not to mention that of violinist Stephane Grappelly (later Grappelli) and the rest of the unique quintet (whose unorthodox orchestration included three guitars, a violin, and a double bass).
By this time Jazz-Tango had become the unofficial mouthpiece of the Hot-Club de France. But tensions were high between Hughes Panassié and Jacques Canetti, the magazine’s publisher, and Panassié and his board of directors decided to found an official organ devoted solely to the aims of the Hot-Club, a publication free from the conflicts and inefficiencies that had marked their relationship with Jazz-Tango. To aid them in this task they turned to a relative newcomer to the scene: Charles Delaunay. Delaunay was the son of the well-known artists Sonia and Robert Delaunay (and had begun to make his own mark as a graphic artist), and a friend of Jacques Bureau, who had been involved in the Hot-Club from its very beginnings. In addition, Delaunay was a jazz-lover of the highest order and dedication; some months earlier he had written to Panassié to express interest in the laborious task of developing a comprehensive jazz discography—the first of its kind—for the use of Hot-Club members.
Thus was born Jazz Hot, a publication devoted solely to the discussion of the jazz which its creators considered to be “real” or “authentic.” In this respect, Panassié’s conception of jazz was the most influential ideological force directing the focus of the review, a circumstance reflected by the fact that the magazine itself was named after Panassié’s first book, Le Jazz Hot (1934). Very soon, Jazz Hot became the preeminent forum for serious discussion of jazz, especially of the work of the black musicians who were often neglected in American publications, and of the nascent continental jazz scene. Until the war, the magazine was bilingual, with facing English and French translations of the in-depth articles and features, a format that ensured outre-manche and outre-atlantique recognition. (After the war, the original logo of the magazine was maintained, with the words Jazz and Hot superimposed on one another in such a way that an anglophone might interpret the logo as Hot Jazz.) Moreover, the graphic style Delaunay created for Panassié’s journal was quite striking, “a cross between the photographically illustrated cinema journals and the Catholic journals like Etudes,” infused with a singular artistic sensibility that created a miniature modernist masterpiece within every issue. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the magazine’s content was unsurpassed in quality, highlighting artists and records whom the editors believed deserved a closer look, announcing jazz events both in France and elsewhere, eloquently defending jazz against critics who denied its very musicality, and serving as a rallying point for amateurs de jazz who were attracted by the ideology and pedagogy of their mentor, Hughes Panassié.
Jazz Hot’s success only increased as it gained in maturity. In tandem with the Hot-Club de France, it helped increase the visibility of jazz innovators, especially black artists, who otherwise might have remained hidden in the flood of commercial, often white, imitators who were reaping the greatest financial rewards from the age of swing. Under the stewardship of Panassié and Delaunay, the French jazz scene gained a vitality and prominence unimaginable without their tireless and mostly unpaid efforts. In 1937, Delaunay published the first edition of his Hot Discography, the first-ever example of a comprehensive jazz discography. This work received instant international acclaim, and today is hailed as a crucial (and still useful) first step in the development of a complete discography of all recorded jazz, the only music for which such comprehensive documentation exists.
In the same year, with the backing of Pathé-Marconi, Panassié and Delaunay co-founded a new record label—Swing—and agreed to split 50-50 the responsibilities and profits of the label’s artistic directorship. Swing was devoted to the same artistic virtues as Jazz Hot and the Hot-Club, the promotion of the American and French music which Panassié and Delaunay considered to be “authentic” jazz. To this end, its first release was a collaboration between Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter and the French stars Alix Combelle and Andre Ekyan. Swing would also release the fruits of Panassié’s 1938 trip to New York to record his old friend and teacher Mezz Mezzrow and other prominent Harlem musicians. Finally, the Hot-Club was an indefatigable concert promoter, organizing frequent concerts of the stars and undiscovered talent of the Continent as well as bringing black bands to the grandes salles of Paris. Among latter were the Teddy Hill band in 1937, which included the young Dizzy Gillespie in the trumpet section, and the famed Duke Ellington Orchestra in April of 1939.
- Good call. I can check it for Copy Vio. - Pernambuco 19:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
