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Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars

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William Shack, late professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, has done a terrific job in bringing to life the Parisian jazz scene between the Great Wars. At the end of the First World War black Americans in the US Expeditionary Force, most notably James Reese Europe's Hellfighters Band, essentially introduced jazz to France and, by staying in Paris or returning thereto after demobilization, they formed the condensing nucleus of the black American jazz community that flourished in Montmartre between the Wars. Contemporary to the Harlem Renaissance in New York, the "Harlem in Montmartre" community provided black jazz musicians, entertainers, and entrepeneurs, an exciting environment, largely free from the racial bigotry and Jim Crow policies common in the US. This book goes a long way to become the standard work on the matter, describing the principal individuals, the clubs, the shows, the music, all interwoven in a lively and fluent style that helps to revive these exciting and by now long gone decades. Wonderful!