“I thank the European Blues Union for this distinction, which recognizes the passion of my parents, Jacques and Marcelle Morgantini, for blues music.
This passion was accompanied by a strong desire to share its knowledge through the organization of numerous concerts, talks, workshops, and recordings in Chicago blues clubs.”
Luc Morgantini
Jacques Morgantini was born on 21 February 1924, in Montbéliard, Doubs, France.
At the age of 14, he discovered jazz music through the demonstration records that accompanied the first record players his father sold for the Thomson company.
In his late teens, he arrived in Pau and completed his secondary education at the Lycée Louis Barthou. It was during his chemistry studies in Toulouse that he met Hughes Panassié, the French pioneer of jazz music and founder of the first French Hot Jazz Club, at a conference, of which he was president. He then joined Mazda and worked as a sales trainer throughout his career.
Jacques actively participated in research on jazz music alongside Hughes Panassié, who offered him the position of vice-president of the French Hot Jazz Club. He continued this task for 22 years, studying aspects of jazz often overlooked by official commentators. He collaborated closely with Hughes Panassié in the development of the “Dictionnaire du JAZZ.”
During the Second World War, Jacques Morgantini began his investigations into the knowledge of blues and in 1945 founded the Hot Club de Pau, an association that enabled him to organize jazz and blues concerts from 1947 to 1982 to promote this music in Béarn. He developed a network of American correspondents with whom he exchanged records: French jazz records for American blues records. This is how he gradually discovered many musicians, singers, guitarists, harmonica players, and pianists.
In 1951, with the help of the Hot Club de France, he brought Big Bill Broonzy to France. A concert was organized in a former Anglican chapel in Pau (the former Le Méliès cinema) for 51 people. Big Bill Broonzy stayed with Jacques’ parents in Pau for eight days. Every day, Jacques tirelessly questioned Big Bill to perfect his knowledge of the blues and learned a lot from this American “big brother.”
During a blues lecture he gave at a teacher training institute in the suburbs of Pau, he met Marcelle Chailleux, originally from Sarthe, who would become his wife in 1963.
Then, in Bordeaux, he met Jean-Marie Monestier, the owner of a jazz and blues record store who wanted to bring American bands to France. Jacques then suggested they partner with him, providing him with a list of musicians to contact. In 1969, they organized the CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL tours, managed by Jean-Marie Monestier and photographer Jean-Pierre Tahmazian, with the help of the young Didier Tricard, who would later take over the management of the tours. When these musicians visited Pau, Jacques invited them into his home and interviewed them about their lives and music to broaden his knowledge of the blues. He recorded them privately and at public concerts in Pau, Bayonne, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Orange, and Nice, creating an exceptional collection of previously unreleased recordings.
He also supervised some of these bluesmen’s recordings for the Black&Blue and Blues Reference labels, founded and managed by Jean-Marie Monestier with his colleague Jean-Pierre Tahmazian. In 1969, during the first CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL tour in France and Pau, he recorded John Lee Hooker at his home in Gan, producing the album “Get Back Home in the USA” and had Memphis Slim’s first French album released in Bayonne by the Basque label Agorila in 1961.
During the 1970s, after meeting a host of blues musicians at concerts organized by the Morgantini couple, Marcelle, captivated by this music and the personalities of these musicians, decided to travel to Chicago to the deprived Black neighbourhoods of the South Side and West Side to record this music at the very heart of its origins. Jacques advised her on the selection of musicians and groups to record. Between 1975 and 1977, she went to Chicago to record then unknown bluesmen with her son Luc, to whom Jacques had previously taught the basics of live recording methods using a Nagra-type tape recorder and a mixing desk. Once there, in Chicago, they benefited from the help of musicians such as Jimmy Dawkins, the Myers brothers, Freddy Below, Big Voice Odom, and Jim O’Neal, the founder of the American magazine “Living Blues,” to facilitate their introduction to the blues scene and the notoriously difficult black neighbourhoods. Recording sessions followed one after another.
Upon their return from Chicago, Jacques selected the tracks for the recordings, and Marcelle wrote the elements for the cover art. Thus, the MCM (Marcelle Chailleux Morgantini) label was created, bringing together 17 vinyl records, of which she was the producer. It is worth noting the quality of the recordings made by their son Luc, then in his twenties, to whom we owe the sound of these records recorded in the heart of Chicago. These live recordings in small Chicago clubs launched the international careers of numerous blues artists such as Magic Slim, Jimmy Johnson, Big Voice Odom, and produced the world’s one and only recording of Bobby King. Marcelle passed away in 2007. She leaves behind an exceptional musical legacy of historical and international significance.
Jacques wrote numerous blues and jazz articles for the Hot Club de France magazine, as well as countless musical reviews on various records and labels. He is behind numerous blues and jazz compilations based on records from his personal collection. Notably, he launched the BLACK AND WHITE collection for RCA France and reissued the entire series on LPs, featuring all the great blues musicians, THE BLUEBIRD BLUES ANTHOLOGY, based on his 78 rpm copies. He is at the origin of a series of CDs this time and from 1986, JAZZ FOR EVER and BLUES FOR EVER which gave amateurs, for the first time, access on CDs to the music of the legends of Rural Blues of the 30s. Also, more than 100 CDs of compilations of the great Jazz and Blues musicians, especially those who were little known to amateurs for the EPM brand, as well as for FREMEAUX & ASSOCIES. Likewise, a series of eight RIVERBOAT LPs devoted to unknown musicians to amateurs at the time, such as Roy Milton, Amos Milburn, Cecil Gant, Cousin Joe, and others.
Throughout his life, Jacques Morgantini continued to record bluesmen in his home, organized blues concerts, and followed his work as a music critic (on the Hot Club de France bulletin), hosted radio shows on the theme of jazz and blues (at EIPM Euro-info in Pau), organized workshops in his home in Gan, and gave lectures to share his knowledge with as many people as possible. The uniqueness of this knowledge lies in the fact that it was acquired through close contact with artists touring in France and in their environment in Chicago.
In 2016 and 2017, he was invited to give two lectures at the Cahors Blues Festival in France, where his name appears on the only French “Marker” issued by the Blues Foundation. Jacques Morgantini was passionate about fishing and nature, and he knew all about river and sea fish, the birds he particularly loved, and the Latin names for the mushrooms he delighted his guests with, including his famous porcini omelette or his lepiota casseroles freshly picked from the surrounding forests.
Marcelle was also famous for his cassoulet, and many blues musicians dedicated a song to him.
Jacques Morgantini passed away at age 95 on 2 December 2019 (Pau) on a one-way journey to the stars of the blues.
French pioneer of the knowledge of the blues and the recognition of these artists in the very heart of Chicago, the contribution of Jacques, Marcelle, and Luc Morgantini is of paramount importance for the promotion of the blues and its history in France, Europe, and around the world. Their work and passion for the “devil’s music” are chronicled in the documentary “Mémoire de Blues,” released in 2016, which earned Jacques Morgantini a “Keeping the Blues Award” from the Memphis Blues Foundation (USA) for his body of work.
Along with Alexis Korner (England), Horst Lippmann and Fritz Raü (Germany), Jacques Morgantini is one of the four pioneers of blues knowledge in Europe.
Jacques Gasser
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