Hugues Panassié’s Supernatural Swing: Criticism, Politics and the Iconic Jazz Recording

The early French jazz listeners faced something of a paradox: they loved the music’s lived coincidence of creative thought and execution—no sooner had Louis Armstrong conceived a melody than it wound its way out of his trumpet—and yet, for the most part, it was only by listening to that melody wind its way up from an Okeh 78 and out of the phonograph’s horn, maybe for the tenth time that morning, that Europeans could themselves experience such moments. Though Paris was becoming jazz’s European capital and American musicians were not hard to find, and though imported discs were