Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sacha Distel was born on January 29, 1933 in Paris, France and started playing piano but switched to guitar. In 1948 when he was 15 his uncle Ray Ventura, founder of the Original Dixieland Jass Band that settled in Paris, invited him to see Dizzy Gillespie play with his orchestra.
In 1948, Ventura invited Sacha to listen to Dizzy Gillespie perform with his orchestra, that eventually split into two rival bands: Guy Wormser’s New Orleans die-hards and the cool jazz and bebop aficionados led by Distel. With saxophonist Huber Damisch, Sacha founded the band that placed him among the jazz leaders, winning the “Coliseum’s Night of Jazz “Meilleur Petit Orchestre Moderne” award, with Damisch and Distel winning prizes as musicians on the same night.
The guitarist worked alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett – who popularized the Distel composition “La Belle Vie” or The Good Life – and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in the late 1950s after establishing himself as a French crooner.
Sacha would go on to have his own variety show on French television, become popular outside France, perform for the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday, played Billy Flynn in the London production of Chicago, dated Brigitte Bardot for a year, and later married Olympic skier Francine Breaud. After a long illness, vocalist and guitarist Sacha Distel, who had hits with a cover of the Oscar winning “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”, “Scoubidou” and his own “The Good Life”, passed away on July 22, 2004, age 71, in Rayol-Canadel, France.
