The Jazz à Juan Story

Jazz in Juan..

It started with a little known story that would eventually make Antibes a major crucible of Afro-American music.  In 1923 the wealthy American Gerald Murphy and his wife built a home in Cap d'Antibes.  With him, came his beloved 78 rpm collection of blues, ragtime, Negro spirituals and jazz.  He even sealed a copy of the original record of The Weatherbird Rag in the keel of his yacht, which he christened Weather Bird.  The dazzling lifestyle of the young wealthy couple attracted among other artists, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novel Tender is the Night was inspired by a party in the casino in Antibes, and Tales of the Jazz Age, which was modeled on the lives of the Murphys.  Murphy went on to share his record collections with his friend Igor Stravinksy, who drew on jazz in his works, and in 1928 consulted on the set of Hallelujah, the first film made in Hollywood to have an all black cast, and which featured the first soundtrack of Afro-American culture. 

Around the same time, in 1928, the author Paul Morand published  his best-seller Magic Noire, an anthology of short stories celebrating the emergence of Blacks into the modern world. The most astonishing entitled, Charleston.  It is a fictional account of a young black saxophone player being mysteriously murdered, and being unjustly accused of assault by a blond American woman.  Through the writings of Fitzgerald and Morand, Juan-les-Pins became known as the first crossroads of the pleasure of jazz and a haven for Afro-American artists and intellectuals fleeing segregation.

The Bechet Years.

Sidney Bechet was performing throughout Europe in those years, eventually coming to Antibes after the war, where he spent his summers.  Thanks to him and other artists of his time, Antibes had become the world center for New Orleans Revival.  Here Bechet composed Le marchand de poisons (The Fishmonger, Ognong (Onions), Petite Fleur and Dans les rues d' Antibes (In the Streets of Antibes. In 1951 Sidney Bechet married  Elizabeth Ziegler, a re-kindled flame, at the Antibes town hall.  In the heat of the summer, just as Juan-les-Pins had become the number two jazz capital of France, second only to Paris, the event caused quite a stir.

By morning hundreds of people were crowded into the Place Nationale.  A cavalry of cowboys on horseback opened the procession, followed by a huge carnival float featuring the Thomas and His Merry Boys Band.  Next in line came a giant clarinet carried by a group of young people dressed in Provencal costume.  The procession moved off after a cloud of doves was released, just like during the Harlem Renaissance.  Then came Claude Luter and Benny Bennett's bands, the Fanfare de la Vespa and the African-Americans from the garrison in Frejus.  From the Antibes town hall to the Vieux Columbier in Juan, the procession drew 20,000 people.  According to the people who were there, we'll never know if it was wine or rum flowing from the fountains that flanked the coaches lent by the Prince of Monaco.  For ten years, until his battle with cancer began in 1959, Bechet played in Juan every summer with or without his friend Claude Luter, at the Viex Colombier in Juan-les-Pins.  Bechet loved Juan as much as Juan loved Bichet.

Jazz à Juan.  From Newport to Antibes.  It wasn't the first jazz festival of all time, but it is the oldest festival of its type in Europe.  The first jazz festivals were one time shots:  Nice in 1948 (with Louis Armstrong, Stephane Crapelli and Djanot Reinhardt), then the following year in Paris at the theatre Margny and Salle Playel.  The success of these festivals inspired the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954.  And the format of Newport inspired the producers of the First European Jazz Festival to launch Jazz à Juan in 1960.

From the start, the Festival was an innovator where Free Jazz would flourish, and welcomed the young Stephane Grapelli and Charlie Mingus to the stage. It later introduced Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Coltrane, unsyncopated jazz, new wave, jazz rock, latin-jazz and all the new trends. Each year, musicians make the sentimental journey to the Pinède stage. 'Jazz in Juan' is a very special festival with its large number of talented musicians and the wide variety of music that it offers.

Pinède Gould represents to a jazz player what La Scala in Milan does to an opera singer: a confirmation of success and an extraordinary venue and audience. Doyen of festivals in Europe, 'Jazz in Juan' is a veritable mixing pot of culture and trends.