You mentioned Guy Lafitte - Well, in my Army days, I was stationed near Bordeaux for two years as a Medic, and got to be friends with a young trumpeter/university student named Jean-George Bulcourt, whose band sometimes played at the base enlisted men's club.
He made it possible for me to join a wonderful jazz club, "Le Bahut", situated in a basement which had been a 13th century wine cellar in what was once the Roman quarter of Bordeaux, where at the beginning of the night, a two-bar electric fire was required to warm up the 'cave' and its piano!
I sometimes got to sing with Jean-George's band and, one night, who did appear but the wonderful tenor player Guy Lafitte!
Other regulars included Gerard Olimpe, drums, and Jean-Marie Grenuolou, bass. Also a regular, whose name escapes me, was a baritone player who had played with the mambo king Perez Prado, and I felt very lucky to be allowed into this secret world of jazz; I was only seventeen, and the experience changed my life!
They used to play "Parisian Thoroughfare", which I found out years later was Clifford Brown's! In 1976, we took a band from Newcastle, called "Friends Of Jazz" (I know, that name gets used all the time) over to San Sebastian Jazz Festival, and Jean-George arranged accomodation for all seven of us as we passed through Bordeaux, in two show houses on a brand new estate being built by the company he was working for. He also had a little get-together for us and his neighbours around his pool in Medoc, where we all played, and he even got out his old trumpet and joined in.
As I said, we stayed in empty show houses, fully furnished. Imagine Scotty's surprise in the morning, to be walking around in his 'skivvies' and to have the door open and a lady estate agent come into the place with prospective buyers. "No, the drummer isn't included with the house!"
Dave.
(Originally a 'comment' I felt this was worthy of a posting of its own.
Lance.)
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