The music is nothing less than a delight. After scoring Anatomy Of A Murder, Duke Ellington had obviously acquired a taste for the silver screen and turned in something that was nominated for a 1961 Oscar (though it lost, unsurprisingly to West Side Story).

Jazz writer Kevin Legendre explores the encounter between American modern jazz and the French New wave in Paris in the late 1950s and 60s. Paris Blue is an RAL Design color with the number 240 85 15. Different from the Classic list, the RAL Design catalogue specifies colors for interiors. RAL is a well-known color matching system used in several European countries including Germany, France, Italy and the UK. The treatment we got during the whole of our tour,” she says, “was wonderful. Everywhere they took to Louis’ music and came in thousands. It was different to last time – they seemed to appreciate the music more. Kinda’ got with it more. Danny Barcelona’s drum solos stopped nearly every show, yet the time before they didn’t take too much notice of the drums. Louis says they’re getting to know the beat. I was relieved they did like the show, as with all those bottles lying around it would have been dangerous if they hadn’t! Oh, they were Pepsi bottles – they must have drunk millions of gallons. You see the only entrance fee charged was a top from a Pepsi bottle. But they had to open the bottle before they could get in, because on the inside of the crown top was a picture of Louis – and that was what they had to show at the gate. We were entertained by all the rulers everywhere. Velma and I were even invited to visit a harem – a thing which had never been done before.” Guests include jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, film director Bertrand Tavernier, composer Martial Solal, jazz writer Geoff Dyer, historians Kevi Donat and Ginette Vincendeau, bass player Henri Texier and playwright Jake Lamar. A2, A3 <> Recorded live at a benefit for Norman Mailer's mayoral campaign, Cinematheque 16, West Hollywood, CA, May 31, 1969Rhino Entertainment Company. Manufactured for & marketed by Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company, 777 S. Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 The story is nothing too deep. Two musicians, one coloured, one white, meet up with two girls in Paris, and what one would expect to ensue obligingly ensues. The drug problem rears its ugly head; Paul Newman (Ram Bowen, a trombonist) writes a jazz concerto; but it all manages to end fairly happily. Louis plays the part of a visiting American jazz celebrity (Wild Man Moore), complete with his own band – not the All Stars – and mugs his way through his part with his usual infectious, gay abandon. This book reminds us of several books that we've read this year: “No Perfect Love” by Dr. Alyson Nerenberg (non-fiction) and “A Major League Love” by Domenic Melillo (fiction). All of these books highlight the twists and turns that life and love can take. Something unique about “Paris Blue” by Julie Scolnik, however, is that it especially highlights the “rose-tinted goggles” of idealism that lovers often have at first, leading to disappointments and shattered expectations. It's about what happens when the perfect love isn't so perfect, and it's also about a woman's journey to self-discovery. Julie’s description of the music of Paris, the Chorus was interesting and would have loved to hear more rather than bus & metro journeys.

Paris Blue” is a drama-filled memoir by Julie Scolnik chronicling her decade-plus, on and off romantic relationship with a Frenchman named Luc, a lover who shares Julie's passion for classical and baroque music. This book has several dimensions and layers. The other relationship is more intense (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were, of course, husband-and-wife offscreen, and this was the fourth time they had appeared together on screen). Newman’s Ram Bowen is both selfish, arrogant and ambitious, with eyes to become a serious composer, and not really prepared to take on Woodward’s Lillian Corning – a divorcee with two children – full time. Throw in a sub-plot about the group’s guitarist Michel “Gypsy” Devigne (Serge Reggiani) – a clear reference to Django Reinhardt – and his heroin addiction, and we’re looking at a fairly rich bouillabaisse, before we even mention the music.This is how the story unfolds as Julie recalls the first serous love of her life, Luc. She’s twenty, very pretty, and somewhat naive—an American college student in Paris during her year of study abroad. He’s in his late twenties, a former student radical, a legal bureaucrat for the French government. He’s hoping to join a legal firm someday. Both are smart. Both love classical music. She wants to perfect her French. He wants to learn English. When they notice each other during rehearsals of the Chorus of the Orchestra of Paris, this is a dream come true. An antagonistic lover in Julie Scolnik's "Paris Blue" would like to similarly prefer to exist only in the letters he writes. Adopting an attitude suggested (although perhaps not "intended") by Derrida's famous pun, "il n’y a pas de hors-texte", the man courting the protagonist wants her to believe the text and ignore everything outside it. Blind to the subtle colors of this City of Lights, he wants her to see what he can never make her hear. Paris in the civil rights era was a hub of artistic collaboration as well as a kind of political refuge - a destination for American jazz musicians escaping racial prejudice and turbulence at home, finding new creative encounters abroad. It’s a challenge if the person you love deeply is color blind. What if they see everything as one shade or other of the color blue? How will you share the multitude of vivid colors that surround you? But if the person you love also suffers from an apparent emotional blindness, the challenges threaten to become insurmountable; the blueness of everything begins to seep into your soul. Paris Blues is a film with a sound jazz base, four A-list actors, a top director (Martin Ritt – The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Hud), plus a guest appearance by Louis Armstrong, ubiquitous in films of this type in the 50s and 60s. Arguably the icing on the cake is a score by Duke Ellington.