French Harp Players
| In the eyes of our Anglo-saxon and American neighbours,
France is often seen as a picturesque country with a very traditional life style, where we
delight in eating the most revolting things that hop, crawl or have liver diseases and
where music is limited to Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier. What is less known is that
from the late 50s to the early 70s, several bluesmen who didn't manage to make ends meet
in America moved to Paris, the most famous ones being Memphis Slim, Luther Allison and
Sugar Blue. Through them, and later through French rock n' roll stars like Eddie Mitchell
and Johnny Halliday, blues became part of the French cultural scene and brought harmonica
with it. French harmonica players aren't very well-known outside of France and sadly, are not even well known in France.. I can't aim to make the public aware of them, but at least I can try to make harmonica-aware net surfers know them better. If you've reached this page then half of my task is done : just read on ! The most famous of French harmonica players is Jean-Jacques Milteau, to whom I have dedicated a whole section of my web page which you will access to by clicking here. For all the others, I've tried to gather as much info as I could. If you know anything more or if you're a French pro harp player (unlikely if you're reading this in English), please let me know ! I have also written an article presenting the French Harp Scene that was published in Harmonica World (UK) and Harmonica Player (Germany). You can access that article by clicking on its title : Diatonique Camembert.
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