[Dixielandjazz] Finally, a worthy Claude Luter Obit

[Steve Barbone]

Be sure to read the paragraph about Bechet and the "girls". :-) VBG

Cheers,
Steve Barbone



This appeared in The Independent on October 14. - By Steve Voce

Claude Luter, clarinettist and bandleader: born Paris 23 July 1923; married
(one son, one daughter); died Poissy, France 6 October 2006.
Jazz has had several golden ages, but few were more romantic than the one
that was set in Paris's caves de St Germain des Prés in the post-war years.
Although, like the rest of the French traditional jazz musicians, his
playing was assured rather than accomplished, clarinettist Claude Luter was
lord of the innumerable jazz clubs that sprang up in those Paris cellars
after the war. His career and his name was made when the New Orleans
musician Sidney Bechet came to Paris and became king, with Luter at his
side.

Like the other bands, Luter's was an earthy variant of the style of King
Oliver's Creole Jazz Band of the Twenties, and although it was as basic as
the British traditional jazz of the time, the French variety had the
advantage of its exotic setting. It was like comparing Gauloise to
Woodbines.

The French took to jazz with great exuberance and it was, as nowhere else in
the world, easily accepted throughout whole families. The students in Paris
particularly loved the music and regular visitors to the cellars included
Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and many of the artists of the day.

  Coming from a musical family, Luter had studied piano from 1929 to 1936
before switching to the clarinet and, occasionally, the cornet. He came to
jazz in 1938 influenced by the clarinettists Johnny Dodds, the Martiniquean
Alexandre Stellio and, significantly, Sidney Bechet. Luter played and
recorded with various bands during the later years of the occupation and
from 1946 to 1948 had a residency with a trio at the Lorientais. The trio
soon expanded into a New Orleans style band, which made its first recordings
in 1946 and appeared at the first Nice jazz festival in 1948.

  Boris Vian, sometime trumpeter with Luter's band who made his name later
as a singer, summed up the clarinettist's nature as early as 1948,
describing him as "sincere, most understanding, most hard-working and the
least pretentious of musicians", qualities found by Humphrey Lyttelton,
Louis Armstrong and the many international musicians with whom Luter later
worked.

  In 1949 Luter recorded with the visiting American musicians Rex Stewart,
Buck Clayton and Willie "The Lion" Smith amongst others. And that year
Sidney Bechet returned to Paris for the first time in 20 years.

  Apart from Louis Armstrong, Bechet was the only remaining prime mover in
classic jazz, and, when he settled there, he was lionised across France,
receiving eventually universal acclaim as though he was a front rank pop
star.

  When Bechet arrived in Paris Luter was 26. He was one of several
clarinettist-bandleaders who worked with the American giant, but Bechet
quickly settled on Luter as his favourite and worked with him most often.
Well aware of the musical gifts he could give to the musicians as a teacher
and to his public in general, Bechet was autocratic and demanded his pound
of flesh. Luter told the author John Chilton of a season that he spent with
Bechet at Juan-les-Pins.

  "Sidney loved to find the girls, but, if anyone in the band found a girl
that Sidney liked the look of, he would show his displeasure by cutting out
all of that musician's solos, often for nights on end, sometimes for a whole
week. The band were young and carefree about girls, but for Sidney it was a
very serious business. He did this to me - stopped my solos - but I made it
clear to him that I wasn't going to have that sort of interference in my
private life. I would take all the musical advice and instruction that he
cared to give, but I would not stand for him arranging my life."

  Bechet and Luter made a multitude of recordings, worthwhile listening to
to this day, and toured North Africa in 1951. They stayed together and
remained friends up until Bechet's death in 1959.

  In 1960 Luter was partnered in a two-clarinet recording session with
another of the world's finest players, the less prickly Barney Bigard. Luter
also made a splendid recording of some of Bechet's ballet music, "La Colline
Du Delta", in 1964.

  In 1970 Luter travelled to Los Angeles to play with Louis Armstrong during
the trumpeter's 70th birthday celebrations and he returned to the USA to New
Orleans in 1997 to play at a Homage To Sidney Bechet event.

  The Luter band, now including his son Eric on trumpet, reassembled for one
of its last concerts in Paris's Latin quarter in September 2005.

  Luter's last public appearance was on 21 September this year with the
French Minister for Culture when they accepted a model of the city of New
Orleans on behalf of the French state.