On Thursday 10 October, French guitarist / singer / band leader Benoit Viellefon is launching his new album Out of Dates at The Brunswick, Hove with a concert by his Hot Club. Preview feature by Jane Mann
Benoit Viellefon, originally from Northern France, has led various bands since arriving in the UK in 1998, and regularly plays at Ronnie Scott’s, the Toulouse Lautrec, Café Zédel, the Nightjar Carnaby, etc. but somehow I never got to see him in London. I first saw him play a couple of years ago in St Leonards-on-Sea where I now live and where he has also settled. The show was in a delightful venue called Crown House. Outside, it is an elegant mansion, inside The Regency Rooms resemble a cross between a Russian Tea Room and a Montmartre Cabaret, all mirrors and chinoiserie wall paper, velvet curtains and festoon lights. There’s a stage at one end, a bar at the other and seating in between for about 100, around tables, cabaret style, perfect for Hot Club-tinged dance music. It was a terrific night’s entertainment, and now I go and see him perform whenever I can. I have heard various iterations of the band play over the last two years, including a trio show right on the shingle at a beach bar Goat Ledge.
The new album Out of Dates was actually recorded some time ago on Brexit day 31 March 2019. It was recorded live, in the old fashioned way with a single stereo microphone positioned in front of the band, at The Kino-Teatr St Leonards another excellent venue in a shabby chic old cinema which is now a combination of picture house, concert hall, art gallery, and bar restaurant.
Some of the personnel in the band changes from time to time, and many previous members have gone on to develop substantial careers – for example Sara Dowling, Sam Braysher, most of the Kansas Smitty’s and Duncan Hemstock. This has, of course, often been the way of jazz bands – they act as spring boards for the next generation of musicians and new jazz movements. Former members of Ted Heath’s band famously include Ronnie Scott and Stan Tracey who went off in their own different directions.
I went to hear Benoit play again last week (back in Crown House) and I can report that the current band is top notch. In Hove, and on the subsequent tour, this is the band you will see. What with the global pandemic, and the travel restrictions of Brexit, the original band did not get to do the full planned tour, just a couple of gigs in Vienna and Bratislava.
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I met him in his Japanese wife’s restaurant, and asked him about his musical life. He was very forthcoming.
I learned that Benoit (as he has asked to be referred to in this piece, as he maintains that hardly anyone can pronounce Viellefon) grew up in Northern France, in Douai. His was not a particularly musical family, though his grandmother had been a frustrated concert pianist. As a boy he attended lots of family parties where music from the thirties and forties was played. He himself loved English and American rock music, and wanted to be a rockstar like Jimi Hendrix when he grew up. He bought a guitar and taught himself to play. He actually saw his future as a bass player but could not afford a bass guitar at that point in his life. After university (arts, film and photography) he worked in Paris for a spell in graphic design, animation, video games and new media and was quite successful but not happy. He sold everything and went to America to follow his rockstar dream. Going to live in San Francisco, without knowing a soul, and only speaking a little English, was a bold move, and turned out to be a crucial part of his education. Growing up in fairly egalitarian France, he only knew the USA as it represented itself in the cinema, and through music – he had not anticipated the poverty that he would encounter in the Land of the Free. He was genuinely shocked by what he saw – and was chastened by the experience. He stayed for several months and returned to Europe, a changed man. He decided to go to that other source of rock music, England.
He moved to London and devoted himself to music in the time-honoured tradition, busking, following up on ads in Denmark Street and in Loot, looking for regular music work, but he soon ran out of money. Returning to his new media background he set up a company designing web sites etc to pay the bills, and had some pretty good clients, including the BBC, but his heart wasn’t in it – he had health problems, broke up with his girlfriend and took another step back. By 2004 he was back on his feet, doing various temp jobs, and then, for a spell, wound up working on 1920s bi-planes, not as a pilot but as mechanic and operation manager. He loved it, enjoyed dressing for the part, and spoke English all day during the flying season. Through this work he discovered the world of nostalgia tourism, with its historic reenactments of the 1930s and 40s, which chimed nicely with his parents’ interest in that period of history, the clothes and most importantly – the music. That autumn he signed up for a course at the City Lit, studying jazz harmony under Della Rhodes one day a week.
By this time he had acquired a bass guitar too, and now played in bands in a variety of genres including Gnawa music, ska, reggae and blues. He got a regular job as a guitarist with a band called the Skamonics. They played the 100 Club one night, after which, according to Benoit, a man in a hat came over and gave him a telephone number, asking him to call him the next day.
Fully expecting this chap to have forgotten him, he phoned as requested and the man in the hat turned out to be John Mayall’s son Gaz, who invited him to join his Celtic Ska Roots band The Trojans. This was the turning point for Benoit’s new life as a professional musician – he played lead guitar with Mayall from 2005 to 2012. Another key moment was touring Japan with the Skatalites in 2008. It was there he met Yuka, a Japanese woman who had also travelled the world, and was equally in thrall to Western popular music. They got married, and after a period in Japan, returned to England.
In 2009 Benoit was ready to try out his new idea of creating a small orchestra, to play old-fashioned feel-good music. It was a success – the orchestra have performed in several films and TV shows where an authentic sounding (and looking) period band is required, and they also get gigs at themed private parties for the rich and famous from Madonna to the royal family, and the Hot Club is shortly off to India to play a private gig at the Lake Palace in Udaipur. Benoit is already working out the logistics of looking the part but keeping cool (he’s thinking linen suits all round for the band).
There are the regular gigs in London, and now a following on the South Coast too. Benoit has very firm views on the point of his music and his shows – he wants the audience to have a good time. His aim is to inspire and uplift them by putting on a show, and the band always look very smartly turned out – Benoit himself favours Dior and Jaeger suits, and he usually wears those two-tone correspondent shoes, English made, which I associate with tango milongas and prohibition era films. The first time I saw him perform, his wife Yuka was on the ticket desk, wearing 1940s evening dress, even the audience looked appropriately Bohemian – well this is St. Leonards. There is often a light touch of audience participation, call and response – the general plan is to send everyone home smiling, and it works.
His current band are terrific. He has a virtuoso guitarist – Brighton based Jarrod Elks, who really shines on the Gypsy jazz classics like Reinhardt’s Swing 39 and L’Indifference. On piano is the talented Alexander Bryson, such a versatile player, and also a fine composer and song writer (album reviewed here).
He and Benoit have worked together for several years, and are now doing some composing together. I look forward to hearing the results. At the gig Bryson excelled in the South American pieces (a beautiful tune by Cuban master Ernesto Lecuona from about 1915, Melodia del Rio, a barnstorming Tico Tico from Brazil from around the same period and a natty Tea for Two played as a lively cha cha cha) He also sang in Earl Hines’ Dinah in three part harmony with Benoit and Elks, an appealing rendition of this novelty song. Incidentally, Bryson is the only person on this tour who also played on the 2019 CD apart from Benoit himself.
On trumpet is “Magic” Mike Henry who played with the Big Chris Barber Band and the Pasadena Roof Orchestra for decades, and then freelanced with many others. He is steeped in these popular jazz genres, and his enjoyable playing seems effortless. His solos on Paper Moon and Caravan were particularly entertaining.
On double bass – well who knows? Several bass players play for Benoit. The last couple of times it has been Will Collier, another chameleon performer, who is a terrific bass player, but who also sings, and plays guitar and piano too. He is perhaps most well known as the bass player in Alex Horne’s comedy musical outfit The Horne Section, but I have heard both his Chet Baker and his Miles Davis Projects, as well as his rhythm support in this band, and others, and I enjoy his sure intonation and impressive technique very much.
I have also heard Simon Thorpe in the double bass chair with the Trio. He has played with many people (Stacey Kent, Bheki Mseleku, Alan Barnes) and has his own swing band Jivin Miss Daisy, and so is also completely at home with this sort of music. The bass player at the Hove gig will be newcomer Jack Garside, recent graduate from the jazz course at Leeds School of Music, and former member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. Benoit assures me he will be a bass player to watch.
There is currently a guest in the Hot Club – a Romanian violinist called Rarès Morarescu, originally from Bucharest, and a star in that country, in Italy and in France. He studied classical piano and violin from a young age, and had a life-changing encounter as a teenager in France with Stephane Grapelli. Grapelli gave him some lessons and ignited in him a passion for Jazz and Swing. Morarescu has lived and played extensively in the US and in Europe, especially Italy – his wife is Italian. He performs in various musical styles: classical; traditional Romanian; Cuban violin; Neapolitan popular and, of course, the Hot Club de Paris. It is a rare treat to hear a violinist of his calibre.
Benoit himself, front man for the band, mainly plays rhythm guitar, taking the occasional solo, leaving the other guitar solos to Elks. He sings most of the songs though, and I do enjoy hearing him sing in French. At Crown House he gave us a lovely rendition of the Charles Trenet hit Ménilmontant, and a lively Neapolitan tune sung in French called Bambino.
It is difficult to choose, as the hits just kept coming, but my favourite of the instrumentals was probably L’Indifference, an old Hot Club tune by Colombo and Murena. The intricacies’ of the playing by this skilful ensemble and the appeal of hearing authentic Bal Musette music in such a perfect setting are hard to beat.
Fans of the popular music of the 1910s to the 1950s, particularly of the Hot Club de Paris, will want to explore more of the Great European Songbook as well as the more usual American one, with some classic Cuban and Brazilian tunes for good measure, go and see Benoit Viellefon and his Hot Club. You are guaranteed a band of fine musicians playing songs to gladden your heart, all fronted by the charming Benoit.
LINKS: Benoit Viellefon’s website
Out of Dates Live at Bandcamp
Booking link for The Brunswick in Hove on 10 Oct