Tito Leoni
(CHEFS D’ORCHESTRES)
20 Rue André Antoine, 75018 Paris, France

Accordionist and composer Tito Leoni led his own orchestra in Paris. He recorded a number of discs for the Ducretet Thomson label, and published tango and paso doble sheet music. He had a Saturday night residency, with the singer Andre Nau, at the Mon Club. A basement club situated in a dead end off the Avenue de Clichy.

Gilbert Dias
(Trompette)
18 Rue Germain Pilon, 75018 Paris, France

Accordion player and trumpeter Gilbert Dias played in the orchestras of Maurice Mouflard (with Sylvio Gualda from Walk 2 – Château Rouge) and Paul Mauriat, as well as with Pierre Akendengue. He released a popular series of Paris and Tango Musette long playing records.

Christiane Lasquin
(COMÉDIENNES)
17 Rue Germain Pilon, 75018 Paris, France

French actress and singer Christiane Lasquin (1929-1988) made her theatre debut at the Théâtre du Tertre (Rue Lepic) in Yves Jamiaque’s Habeas corpus. She caught the public’s attention in the Opéra des gueux at the Théâtre de Poche and was soon cast in the lead role of Pierre Barillet et Jean-Pierre Grédy’s La Plume. She would be a regular theatre performer into the 1980s. Her singing career was short-lived, a handful of EPs in the 1960s evolved into children’s music and spoken word records in the 1970s. She competed for the French selection for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1961, losing out to winner Jean-Paul Mauric, with the song Printemps, avril carillonne. Lasquin was married to the actor Daniel Ivernel, who lived nearby at 11 Rue de l’Armée d’Orient.

Jenny Alpha
(CHEFS D’ORCHESTRES)
12 Rue Véron, 75018 Paris, France

Jenny Alpha (1910-2010) was a Martinique-born French actress, singer and bandleader, who appeared in more than a hundred theatre productions and movies. She started as a dancer and singer in nightclubs, where she met Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker. During WW2 she played an active role in the French Resistance. A star of the exotic cabaret circuit, she was a shrewd business woman, choosing to front her own orchestra from the 1940s until the 1960s when she lived here.

Jacques Berlioz
(COMÉDIENS)
11 Rue Robert Planquette, 75018 Paris, France

Theatre and cinema actor Jacques Berlioz (1889-1969) starred in more than 50 films during a thirty year career. Notable film appearances include La maison du mystère (1933) and Gigolette (1937). The early 1960s saw the end of his working life, but he was still appearing on the Théâtre de Paris stage aged 70.

See an object that relates to Jacques Berlioz

Edin Ben Dadou
(COMEDIENS)
11 Rue Robert Planquette, 75018 Paris, France

Born in 1893 in Perregaux (today Mohammadia, Algeria) Edin Ben Danou studied law in Paris, where he fell in love with the theatre. He was wounded in the forehead in 1915 during WW1. After the war he became an announcer for Radio-Paris, Pathé and Eclair film news. He was not just a broadcaster but an actor, poet, director, and journalist. As a jew in Paris during WW2 he was arrested, and deported to Buchenwald. Upon his return to Paris Ben Danou resumed his career in radio. In 1968 he played the role of a dream doctor in the film Je t’aime, je t’aime, directed by Alain Resnais.

Jean-Marie Pallen
(Guitare)
8 Rue Audran, 75018 Paris, France

Guitarist Jean-Marie Pallen was the primary accompanist from 1964 to 1978 of French gypsy jazz guitarist Louisson Reinhardt, the first son of Django Reinhardt. With a career spanning more than 50 years he has played in venues from Bobino in Paris to the Espace De Création Artistique in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, where he now resides. He released one 7” single under his own name in 1971, but he is perhaps best known for the great musicians he worked with, including Matelot Ferré, Charles Dumont and Francis-Alfred Moerman.

Boris Sarbek
(CHEFS D’ORCHESTRES)
8 Rue Audran, 75018 Paris, France

The orchestra of Boris Sarbek could be heard regularly on the light music radio waves from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was an arranger, bandleader and composer who released a number of 78s on the Columbia label, and later Tangos during the 1950s, when Paris was intoxicated by the sound of latin rhythms.

Roberto Caldarella
(Bandoneon)
7 Rue Audran, 75018 Paris, France

Argentinian bandoneonist and bandleader Roberto Caldarella (1930-1997) played in the band at the Moulin Rouge alongside Hector Grané (who we met on Walk 12 – Mur des je t’aime). Caldarella was a member of the orchestra under the directorship of Astor Piazzolla.
Towards the end of the 1970s he played at the legendary La Coupole restaurant with his own orchestra dressed in their lime satin blouses.

Benny Bennet
(CHEFS D’ORCHESTRES)
8 Rue Aristide Bruant, 75018 Paris, France

Born in Venezuela, Benny Bennet was an American latin-jazz bandleader, who mostly worked in France. He moved to the US when he was two years old, developing his skills as a trumpeter and percussionist in his youth. Bennet moved to France to study at the National Conservatory of Music in Paris. In his early years in France he joined Hubert Fol and his Be-bop Minstrels, and would go on to record with Don Byas, Roy Eldrige, James Moody, and Clifford Brown. After forming his own orchestra, he toured throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and then led the orchestra at the Moulin Rouge in Paris for 3 years. Known as the King of Mambo in France, he released a number of excellent singles in the 1960s on Vogue Records. He returned to the US in 1967, and was a waiter at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

See an object relating to Benny Bennet HERE.