Live at Club Saint-Germain – The Lou Bennett Trio, 1980

🇲🇶🎹🎸🥁🎶 Jean-Louis Benoit is the most Martinican of the Franco-American organists. Or the opposite. Lou Bennett was born in Philadelphia, the son of a Martinican father and an American mother. Influenced by Wild Bill Davis and Jimmy Smith, he took up the organ after playing the piano and even the tuba. In 1960, at the age of thirty-four, he arrived in Le Havre to begin a career that would henceforth be almost exclusively French. His explosive first album, Amen, came out that same year, and he went on to collaborate with René Thomas, Kenny Clarke, Barney Wilen, Leo Wright, Philippe Catherine, etc. He also formed several solo groups, including the trio with guitar and drums, which was very much in vogue and which he loved. In 1980, he moved to Paris for this Live at Club Saint Germain with Billy Brooks on drums and another Caribbean virtuoso on guitar, André Condouant. On the album’s six tracks, we’re in the realm of the best swing (Arrival, Pentatitus…) where guitar and organ pass the ball back and forth from chorus to chorus with breathtaking dexterity. Lou Bennett doesn’t hesitate to improvise some real bass solos, derived from his old tuba playing. And on the aptly-named Not So Softly, Billy Brooks makes his drums ring to the delight of the Club Saint Germain audience. In short, it was a real pleasure to hear Bennett again on this recording. He didn’t record that many albums, and died in 1997.