HELLO LOUIE

Louis-Victor, Louie as Karen called you, you have left us without leaving us the time to tell you what Jazz Hot, Jazz music and musicians owe to you. After having a whole career dedicated to this music and being an example of professionalism, of devotion and love to artists, you went into a modest and wise retirement under the sun of Florida. You knew what Jazz music gave you and you were extremely elegant in remaining true, supporting musicians and initiatives beneficial to music and enriching the Jazz Hot magazine with your experiences. You did so without any advertising with great efficiency which was equaled only by your loyalty and modesty. Beyond this work exercised with such talent, Jazz music remained the unstained passion of a young amateur who met Charles Delaunay's road in 1948, during the legendary Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra's tour. You would stay faithful to Charles Delaunay and in your native Algeria, you built yourself a life of risks and passion, a life of Jazz music, taking part in the creation of the Hot Club in Oran and becoming a correspondent for Jazz Hot, and that was already more than 50 years ago. In Alger, in 1953, you were at the origin of the A l'avant-garde du Jazz show and in 1956, you promoted the first Jazz Festival in Alger, showing the power of your dream in the dramatic circumstances that everyone remembers.
That same dream brought you to Paris where you entered the world of discs in 1958.Then, two years later you went to settle in the United-States and became Nat King Cole's manager. There again you would remain faithful to him and you dedicated a beautiful special issue to him in 1995. The rest of your life among big disc companies reads like something out of a storyboard or a tale, peppered with spicy anecdotes, special encounters with all the best jazzmen, and stories which often were moving. And from it you would keep in mind two strong images: the first of them is Nat King Cole of course and the second one is Louis Armstrong, when you gave him a special distinction from Jazz Hot on July 4th , 1970 on the Shrine Auditorium stage in Los Angeles, for his 70th birthday.
You shared your exceptional path not only with the readers but also with the correspondents who have followed one another in the Jazz Hot team since your first collaboration. You accompanied the life of jazz music and many are the musicians, the producers and the writers who owed something to you. But you only gloried in the malicious pleasure of telling us about your encounters with John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Wes Montgomery, Horace Silver, Elle Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Ross Russell, Leonard Feather, and thousands of other more or less well-known figures. You helped them all in the same way: efficiently, with the same abnegation and the same love for this music and for musicians, and always modestly and faithfully.
When Charles Delaunay called you in 1968 to help Jazz Hot along, you joined the team without hesitation and, after the usual incidents that punctuate a love story, you finally knew, when I arrived, that you would grew older with your magazine. I am really proud that I had the chance, when I embarked upon the adventure in 1989, and then when I became the captain in 1991, to be chosen by you, to have you by my side, not as a second in command, you were there the first, but more like a consciousness of jazz music and of Jazz Hot, as a permanent support, and also a guide to this world, as a inexhaustible source of knowledge, information and relationship. You kept the best from the Mediterranean region: conviviality and a sense of memory. We shared several things, including our geographical origin, and also, perhaps stronger than anything else, our faithfulness to Charles Delaunay and this love for jazz. There was no need to talk about it, that was obvious.
I really appreciated your congratulations, not only their content but also their spirit, and from all the compliments I've had, yours are my fondest, and they were the most determining for my action because ´†I know that you know†ª as you often told me, parodying Duke with this smile and with Peter Sellers's humour which you always kept, with sometimes this delicious accent from Oran you even had in American English, with always this theatrical emphasis and this distinction which found their balance in your constant sense of humour. You were a great professional, but you never lost the human dimension of jazz and musicians love. You never were short of anecdotes, and even when it dealt with your private life, with your worries, be they about money or your health, you never missed an opportunity to joke.
You were not only our most senior member, a link to Charles Delaunay, but also an essential link to this independent spirit and to the American dream, which gave our magazine an uncommon story. I will never forget the numbers of independent labels you worked hard for, in order to find distributors in Europe or in the States, sacrificing yourself and your time to convince, with patience and diplomacy, those who did not have your love for jazz. I will never forget your work as a writer; you were an example of accuracy.
We saw each other too rarely, and today I have the bitter thought of an unfinished encounter. As you were so jazz, you probably were much more than that. Time has gone by and it has prevented me from having the pleasure of longer and more serene meetings. I hoped to see you and to listen to you in May around two birthday cakes: one for your 50 years of life with Jazz Hot and one for the six hundredth issue.
I wish I had taken the time, Louie, to tell you all of that. I only hope that you could feel it during our frequent transatlantic talks, in our Emails, in our too rare meetings and in Jazz Hot of course.
When you departed this world, you left ValÈrie, your daughter we support in her ordeal. And there is Karen, your secretary you fired to marry her better as you told us with humour. Karen who was at your side for such a long time, and we think of her from the bottom of our hearts, and we gave her all of our affection in these circumstances.
Very often you were joking and you used to say ´†Yves, I have bad news and good news for you! Which one do we start with?†ª This time you started with bad ones, without leaving me the choice and not even the time to choose, and without giving me the good ones. Louie, let me tell you that, for the first time, this furtive departure like Inspector Clouseau, is the worst joke you ever made. We love you.

< Yves Sportis >

Traduction Carole Couque