André Francis

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André Francis (born June 16, 1925 in Paris ; † February 12, 2019 ) was a French music journalist, jazz author and jazz producer.

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Francis was originally an actor who played minor roles in the Comédie-Française and the Folies Bergère Theater . He is a very popular radio presenter for jazz in France and was considered the monsieur jazz of the French state radio, with a career starting around 1948 until his retirement in 1996 with over 200 broadcasts per year at times. In 1959 he convinced ORTF to broadcast “Live Jazz” from clubs and concert halls. In the 1950s he moderated jazz with Lucien Malson at France IV (now France Musique ). From 1964 to 1996 he was head of the jazz division of France Musique. During this time he often had a jazz event broadcast “live” and then discussed the concert with French jazz experts such as Boris Vian , Frank Ténot , Charles Delaunay and André Hodeir .

He broadcast from important French jazz festivals and clubs and organized concerts, for example with Coleman Hawkins , Miles Davis , John Coltrane . In his own words, he knew all the great jazz musicians in France and the USA personally, with the exception of Jelly Roll Morton , Fats Waller and Art Tatum . On the occasion of his retirement in 1987 he organized his ten thousandth jazz concert recording on French radio.

Francis was the author of the most popular jazz book in France for a long time, Jazz , which was first published in 1958. In the 2000s he was responsible for the edition of the CD “ Reissue ” series Les Trésors du Jazz with the music labels Le Chant du Monde and Harmonia Mundi with the ethnomusicologist and film composer Jean Schwarz (* 1939) . Some of the recordings came from their own extensive jazz record collections. In doing so, they were accommodated by French copyright law, which releases recordings 50 years after an artist's death.

literature

  • Roscoe Seldon Suddarth: French Stewardship of Jazz. The Case of France Musique and France Culture , University of Maryland, 2008 (Dissertation)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Profile franceinter.fr, accessed on February 12, 2019
  2. ^ André Francis, "Monsieur Jazz", s'est éteint accessed on February 12, 2019
  3. ^ André Francis Jazz: l'histoire, les musiciens, les styles, les disques , Edition Seuil, Paris 1991
  4. ^ Translated into English by Martin Williams , New York, Grove Press, 1960
  5. ↑ With “boxes” for the period 1898–1943, 1944 to 1951 and then annually until 1959, each with mostly 10 CDs and an accompanying book (except for 1952 with 5 CDs plus 2 bonus CDs).
  6. ↑ Bruno Pfeiffer: Blog “Ça va jazzer” , with photo and interview
  7. ↑ For example, the 1952 box appeared after the 2003 deadline.
personal data
SURNAME Francis, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French jazz author, jazz journalist and jazz producer
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 2019