Jany Carrel / Pierre Deca
(CHANTEURS ET CHANTEUSES)
12 Rue de Suez, 75018 Paris

Top-notch entertainers Jany Carrel and Pierre Déca share a connection with the Mediterranean port of Marseille. Déca was touted as the Music Hall revelation of 1943 with his talent for mimicry, storytelling and humour. He made a splash at Marseille’s Alcazar theatre before appearing in Tunisia and Algeria, where he was a headline act. By the late 1940s he had teamed up with Carrel. They would work together for years to come in variety theatre and operettas, alongside great names such as the Marseillais singer Alibert. Jany Carrell’s mother was a piano teacher from Marseille, and her father a native of the Hawaiian Islands. Her tropical beauty helped to launch her career at a time when mid century Exotica was all the rage.

Ignacio Alderete
(Harpe Indienne)
18 Rue de Laghouat, 75018 Paris

Harpist Ignacio Alderete left his native Paraguay in 1950 to travel the world. He lived and worked in Argentina and Brazil before settling in France where he joined the band Les Guaranis in 1960. Throughout the 1960s he was a regular soloist with the internationally successful Los Machucambos. In 1976, he created the Cochabamba Group and toured with his fellow musicians to Europe, Central America, and Africa.

Henri Tachan
(CHANTEURS ET CHANTEUSES)
39 Rue Doudeauville, 75018 Paris

A maverick singer of the 1960s with his satirical, acerbic, tender and witty songs, Henri Tachan (real name Henri Tachdjian b.1939) has been overlooked for years by many critics. He started his career in Quebec, Canada before releasing his first album in France in 1965, which won the Charles Cros Record Academy Grand Prize. His darkly humorous songs often criticise the establishment, censorship, war, and the military.

Georges Blaness
(CHANTEURS ET CHANTEUSES)
50 Rue Doudeauville, 75018 Paris, France

Georges Blaness was a playback singer in the films of Jacques Demy, including the 1964 hit musical, Les Umbrellas de Cherbourg. Born in Algeria, where he started his singing career with the orchestra of Jo Barousse, he moved to mainland France before Algeria achieved its independence. Blaness was at his commercial peak as a solo artist between the mid 1950s and 60s, releasing several 7” EPs for the Polydor and Decca record labels. He would later become artistic director of Michel Fugain’s Big Bazar in the 1970s.

Manuel Parres
(DANSEURS)
33 bis Rue Doudeauville, 75018 Paris

Creative polymath Manuel Parres excelled in the fields of art, dance and choreography, alongside costume and set design. He joined the Paris Opera in 1945 aged 20 and was a student at the newly established Choreographic Academy of the Opera in Paris. Parres exhibited his expressive drawings and gouache paintings throughout Paris, including at the Museum of Fine Arts. It is said that Parres was a friend of Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso and he certainly had Paris society in his blood. He was the son of the great French singer Germaine Béria, a popular gramophone star, famous for her café concerts between the world wars.

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Maurice Andre
(Trompette)
3 Rue Jean Robert, 75018 Paris

Maurice André (1933- 2012) was a virtuosic French trumpeter and professor of trumpet at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. He entered the Paris Conservatory on a scholarship in 1951, winning the conservatory’s top award for cornet (1952) and for trumpet (1953). It was his unexpected victory at the 1963 Munich International Competition that launched his solo career, and his recordings of baroque works on piccolo trumpet for Erato and other labels in the 1960s and 1970s that brought him to international prominence.

Jean-Jacques Greffin
(Trompette)
3 Rue Jean Robert, 75018 Paris

Jean-Jacques Greffin was a trumpet soloist with the Orchestre de Paris for 12 years before becoming a professor at the National Conservatory of Marseille and solo cornet at the Marseille Opera. He played with, and released music with the Ensemble Musique Vivante and the Quintette De Cuivres De Paris.