Is This Henri Salvador?

Teddy Dupont

I have just read an article which says that the guy standing next to Schulz-Koehn is Al Lirvat the trombonist mentioned by Spatzo.

From this photo, he looks more like the guy I suggested was Henri Salvador to me:-


In the article, Lirvat's says he played at La Cigale during the war.

Bones

Hmmm, interesting. A Nazi Luftwaffe jazz fan. I bet that went over big with the music-Nazis in Berlin.

Any more info about him during the occupation and after the war? Did he survive?

spatzo

Schulz-Koehn alias "Doktor Jazz" was absolutely neither a nazi (extreme political opinion) nor a SS (military political special division) but only a normal Luftwaffe-officer of the german army.

Above all he was an admirer and very good friend of Django, Delaunay and Panassié and he participated years before WWII to the famous recording cession of 1936, May 4th - Gramophone, Paris with Django, Stéphane and the HCQ with Freddy Taylor.The story tells that as nobody (not even Taylor himself) remembered the lyrics of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and he was the only one to remember them he wrote himself them down.

Teddy I think you are right, Al Lirvat could be one of the musicians on the photo but I should suggest this one:



I remember well Al Lirvat as I saw him in 1974 one night at the Cigale. It was a strange place, a rare one,the only place open late in the night in that part of Paris along with the famous "Pigalle" Brasserie. You just payed a few francs to drink something and hear a full set of Jazz. It was still a kind of musical Brasserie that is to say exactly the musical concept that was invented by Drapier.





The last man on the right on Schultz-Koen photo could be Pierre Nourry

Teddy Dupont

spatzo wrote:

The story tells that as nobody (not even Taylor himself) remembered the lyrics of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and he was the only one to remember them he wrote himself them down.

Another version says it was "Georgia".

spatzo wrote:

Teddy I think you are right, Al Lirvat could be one of the musicians on the photo but I should suggest this one:

It could be either but the quality is too poor to be certain. I just thought the other guy's hairline was a better match.

spatzo wrote:

The last man on the right on Schultz-Koen photo could be Pierre Nourry

Schulz-Koehn says the man on the right was Jewish. Here is Nourry in about 1936 - middle back.

HHudson

I found this forum while looking for confirmations of what i suspected about this photo, usually subtitled as "Django with Doktor Jazz and four African American musicians". Svanis solved the incoherence of the mention "La Cigale". Collective intelligence at its best.

Let me put my stone to the monument, as we say in France. (Some of the following links' text is in French.)

- (EN) Lirvat himself confirmed he was on the photo (from the book "Swing under the Nazis")
- From several images on Google and (FR) this page that lists and shows most French Caribbean musicians who were in Paris at the time (among which many recorded with either Django or the Hot Club de France orchestra) i deduct the following order:
Django
Doktor Jazz
Felix Valvert(?)
Robert Mavounzy (the first French jazz musician ever to record Be-bop, later on)
(FR) Silvio Siobud OR (FR) Claude Martial
Al Lirvat (i agree with spatzo on this)
and "the Jew"'s name according to (DE) this page would be (FR) Henri Battut, which implies the photograph was taken before he left for Algiers in may 1943. [NB I just found out in this book (EN) that the photo was taken in the end of 1942, which fits with Battut's bio.]

What probably confused things and memories is that those musicians did play at (and even, for Lirvat, direct the orchestra of) La Cigal(e?) then and later on.

Also, considering the Hot Club de France's Paris headquarters were a base of the SOE's Prosper/Physician Resistance network (with involvement of president Charles Delaunay, and especially of secretary Jacques Bureau, who was responsible for maintaining all the radios in the network), it makes sense if Battut had been around this German officer at the time, possibly to check he was not a SD spy or to try and extract information from him. (Alas, the network collapsed in 1943 and many of its 144 members including Bureau and famous Noor Inayat Khan were caught, arrested and many of them deported or executed.)

HH

spatzo

Excellent work indeed!

François RAVEZ

I agree with you, excellent work and great first post.

I enclose a photo of Félix Valvert (I don't believe it's him on the photo), I believe it could be Ernest Léardée.

A very interesting site about music from Antilles can be found here :

http://alrmab.free.fr/jazzemen.html

Best

François RAVEZ