The Song of the Day is From Jazz's First European Outpost

The Hot Club of France, 1939

The story of the Hot Club de France is extraordinary. It includes Nazi bad guys, Resistance fighters, passionate love affairs, and a continuing musical legacy (publishers: I have a book proposal. Hit me up).

As a music lover, history lover, and French speaker, I am fascinated by the development of jazz in Paris following World War I. Put simply, jazz was loved everywhere it went; it first went to France with the American Army in World War I.

A cosmopolitan group of musicians in the 1930s, which included a violinist with an Honors Degree from the Conservatiore de Paris and a couple of Roma gypsy boys, got together to create the “Hot Club of France” to play “le jazz.”