Barney Wilen

Barney Wilen had a French mother and an American father who had built a prosperous career first as a dentist and later as an inventor. His childhood unfolded largely along the French Riviera until the family departed at the outbreak of World War II, returning only after the conflict ended. Wilen later recalled that his mother’s friend, the poet Blaise Cendrars, was the one who persuaded him to pursue music. While still a teenager he opened a youth jazz club in Nice and performed there regularly. In the mid-’50s he relocated to Paris, where he appeared at Club St. Germain alongside visiting Americans that included Bud Powell, Benny Golson, Miles Davis, and J.J. Johnson. His profile rose sharply in 1957 after he recorded with Davis for the soundtrack of Louis Malle’s film Lift to the Scaffold. Two years afterward he joined Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk on the score for Roger Vadim’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1960). During the ’60s Wilen explored rock-oriented approaches, releasing the album Dear Prof. Leary in 1968. Early in the following decade he organized an unsuccessful journey of filmmakers, musicians, and journalists to Africa intended to document pygmy music. He subsequently performed with the punk rock group Moko, established a French mobile-jazz initiative that brought performances to remote communities, and contributed to theatrical productions. By the mid-’90s he had returned to a bebop style, working in a band led by pianist Laurent de Wilde. Much of his later output appeared on the Japanese Venus label.