Jazz In Paris

Universal Music, Jazz France

One of the most highly praised reissue series in jazz, Jazz In Paris, was heralded by collectors around the world when it was released over twenty-five years ago. Volkher Hofmann chronicled his passion for the series on his web site, living with music.com. Alas, the site no longer exists. His introduction is reproduced below.

“One of the highlights of these past years was to try and complete my full run of the wonderful reissue series, “Jazz in Paris”. Around the time when these over 100 CDs came out, people were still reluctant to pay larger sums of money for these, especially since prices seemed to be dropping after their initial release, but I’m sure many wish they had gotten with the program from the get-go. At the time, eBay also seemed to be less infested with bargain hunters as it is now, and I count myself extremely lucky that I was able to get the boxed sets of the first 100 CDs or so at virtually no cost. Altogether I paid around 200 Euro for a little over 100 CDs and still today I regularly celebrate the anniversaries of these purchases. Add to that the usual insanity that is collecting and what you get is me, myself and I also investing into the four wonderful compilation boxes some months later. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Jazz went to Paris and other places in Europe to live. That might sound funny to many of those who don’t spend a lot of time listening to jazz, but it’s true. Although its birthplace was elsewhere, many musicians either relocated to Europe or found a more than appreciative audience there whereas in the US they were at times perhaps shunned or at best ignored. I think it was Dizzy Gillespie who once said something to the effect that jazz was too good for the United States. Without wanting to get too much into the racial implications here, it is a fact that at various times in US history, black (jazz) musicians had more than their share of problems, segregation more often than not relegating them to the back entrances of places they were playing at – and that was only a small part of the problem(s).

Paris, which had developed into the jazz center of Europe already in the beginning of the 20th century, offered many of these musicians a safe haven as well as a permanent home (later, Denmark, Sweden and sometimes Germany usurped that role) and jazz thrived because of it.

One can even be as bold as to state that without Paris and Europe, jazz might never have been recognized as an art form. It was in Europe that jazz had gained that kind of recognition and, as far as I recall, it was jazz critics such as Leonard Feather (England) and Dan Morgenstern (Austria), who spent their entire lifetimes promoting it as an art form in the United States.

No matter what your take on jazz history is, it remains a fact that we all owe the bigwigs at Universal for releasing this wonderful run of spectacular recordings from mostly the 1950s and 1960s. If you got with the program right from the start, you had the chance to pick up over 100 regular reissues of classic LPs/EPs, a few more that were added “out of series”, as well as four absolutely beautiful boxed sets that collected the best from the previous runs on 3 CDs plus a wonderful booklet and perhaps an extra recording or two each. One had the chance to buy these reissues separately or, for a limited time, in two slipcased editions that either collected 25 or 75 of them and, if you kept your ears close to the ground, you will have the chance starting March 2007 to complete the series with the last 15 CDs coming up. There even was a catalog CD and a DVD (not seen by me) and if you look at the grand picture, this is definitely one of the most consistent and exciting reissue series of the 21st century, bar none.

Kudos to Universal France for pulling it off.

Each CD is housed in a digipack cover, carries the “Gitanes Jazz Productions” logo, was carefully remastered, sports a wonderful Paris photo from that time period and includes a booklet in French and English with liner notes and complete session information. The spines are quite colorful and for packaging fetishists like me, the entire run brightens up a collection considerably.

The CDs published “out of series” were similar and equally wonderful double CDs with a portrait of the artist on the cover.

The boxed sets that were compilations of the best tracks from the first hundred or so CDs came housed in sturdy white “themed” boxes and included stunningly produced booklets (books, in fact) with rare photos, reproductions of LP covers, posters and tickets plus longer essays invoking the spirit of the time. For a while, these boxed sets were available at real bargain prices from caiman.com and I jumped on them for the books alone.

Again, these compilation boxed sets were certainly amongst the best ever produced in Europe.

Beg, steal AND borrow.”

© Volkher Hofmann, 2007

The slipcase that housed the initial 75 CD set is reproduced at the top showing the front and back. The two side panels (above) offered Alain Tercinet’s introduction to the series, one side in French and the other in English.

The booklet that accompanied the set that I purchased provided details on the first 101 CDs. It is reproduced below to supplement information that is available at discogs.

Alain Tercinet was a French jazz critic, historian, biographer, and journalist known for his erudite contributions to jazz scholarship, particularly through his books on key styles and figures in the genre and his extensive work as a contributor to leading French jazz magazines.

Born on January 29, 1935, in Chambéry, Savoie, France, as the son of an architect, Tercinet discovered jazz in 1948 and later studied at the Écoles des Beaux-Arts in Lyon from 1952 to 1956. He went on to establish a prominent career in jazz journalism, serving as a contributor to Jazz Hot from 1970 to 1980 and to JazzMan from 1992 to 2009, where he shared his deep knowledge of the music’s history and evolution.

His published works include the influential West Coast Jazz (1986), a detailed examination of the California-based jazz scene of the 1950s and early 1960s, Be Bop (1991), and Parker’s Mood (1998), alongside his collaboration on the Dictionnaire du Jazz (1998). Tercinet was also widely recognized for writing liner notes and annotations for hundreds of jazz album reissues and compilations, cementing his role as one of the most respected voices in French jazz documentation. He died on June 28, 2017, after a prolonged battle with cancer.